


Kingfishers

by branwyn, mekare



Series: Person of Interest stories by branwyn [13]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Abusive Parent, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Art, F/M, Get Together, Grace and Harold don't meet until early season 2, Joan (Person of Interest) - Freeform, M/M, Not really a casefic, POV Grace Hendricks, POV Harold Finch, POV John Reese, POV The Machine (Person of Interest), Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-OT3, The Machine runs matchmaker.exe, abuse in the foster system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27454648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mekare/pseuds/mekare
Summary: They have a new number. Her name is Grace Hendricks.
Relationships: Grace Hendricks/John Reese, Harold Finch/Grace Hendricks, Harold Finch/Grace Hendricks/John Reese, Harold Finch/John Reese
Series: Person of Interest stories by branwyn [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641835
Comments: 42
Kudos: 41
Collections: Person of Interest Big Bang 2020





	1. The Painter By the Water

**Author's Note:**

> The beautiful artwork embedded in Chapter One and Chapter Six is by my Big Bang partner artist, [mekare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mekare/pseuds/mekare).
> 
> Thank you to stingaling, for your generous beta reading, and talkingtothesky for encouraging me through early versions of the story.
> 
> Immense gratitude to my untiring beta, [st_aurafina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina), who has read every word of this story multiple times, including the stuff that didn't make the final cut. This story is dedicated to her.

…I think this is  
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind  
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life  
That doesn’t have its splash of happiness?

—Mary Oliver

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:  
Deals out that being indoors what each one dwells;  
Selves—goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,  
Crying, _What I do is me, for that I came._

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

**Universal Heritage Insurance  
March 29, 2012  
8:58 a.m.**

Two minutes before his one and only appointment of the morning, Harold Wren stands up from his desk and buttons the single button of his jacket. He smooths wrinkles from wool with flat palms and adjusts his pocket square. The suit is navy, with green windowpane check—bold and adventurous by the standards established for Harold Wren, but for good reason.

Their number today is an artist, and Harold is tasked with establishing a personal connection with her. He’s hoping that a small effort in the matter of dress will help his cause.

At nine precisely, his assistant knocks twice and pokes her head in to announce the number’s arrival. 

“Thank you, Ms. D’Angelo,” Harold says. “Please send her in.” There’s a swoop in his stomach; he probably should have eaten breakfast, only the ringing of a payphone had interrupted him on the way to the bakery. 

A petite red-haired woman clutching a large messenger bag appears in his doorway. She hesitates just for a second, taking in the office and Harold himself in a swift glance.

“Good morning,” says Harold, extending his hand. “Thank you so much for coming, and on such short notice. Did you find your way all right?”

“Of course,” she says brightly, giving him her hand to shake. “Sorry about the cold fingers—forgot my gloves. I love the pattern on that tie. The Strawberry Thief, right?” 

“I, ah, yes.” Harold looks down, automatically touching a fingertip to the bright silk brocade. “I did confess a partiality toward the aesthetics of the 19th century in my email.”

“You did, it’s just, I didn’t realize William Morris had a neckwear line.”

Her name is Grace Hendricks: 42 years old, single, never married. Graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, MFA from Yale. She has coffee on Thursday mornings with a small circle of friends, most of them artists like herself. On Fridays and Tuesdays, she works a four hour shift as a volunteer at Kirkwood Children’s Home. Occasionally, she teaches painting classes. In her leisure time, she’s an avid patron of the public library system and an amateur confectioner with a particular knack for making sugared violets and candied fruit peels. She likes the city parks, surrealist paintings, and the 1987 Danish film _Babette’s Feast_. 

Who on earth would wish to harm her, Harold can’t begin to guess. But she makes an even more unlikely perpetrator than victim, so, here they are. Getting to know each other.

“I nearly suggested that we meet at the cafe, but then I thought, why not let you get a look at the space first.” Harold makes a vague, twirling gesture that encompasses the office around them. “Truthfully, I’m not even sure where I’d hang a new painting.”

Ms. Hendricks makes a slow 360-degree turn, taking in the blank walls, the muted earth tones, the sprawl of the city far beyond the windows. “No matter where you hang it, it’s gonna have some stiff competition from that view,” she muses.

“Oh, well. In that case, I’d just close the blinds.”

She smiles, scrutinizing, like she’s not quite sure if he’s joking. Harold smiles weakly back. 

“I was surprised when I got your email,” she says. “Pleased, obviously, but surprised.”

Their exchange of emails was certainly rushed, but otherwise perfectly businesslike and unexceptionable. It was maybe a little eccentric of Mr. Wren to request a same-day consult for the commission of a painting, but Wren _is_ eccentric. He’s always had to be, to cover for his many absences and inconsistencies.

“You said someone recommended me,” she continues. “Do you mind if I ask who it was? I’ve been racking my brains and I can’t think of a single person.”

“Ah.” Harold’s hands flutter against his sides. Just his luck that she isn’t vain enough to overlook the paucity of his cover story just because it works to her advantage. “Yes, you’ve caught me. I fibbed about my reference. I actually read one of your books recently. That is, a book with your artwork on the cover. I think perhaps my nephew must have left it behind the last time he visited. It’s the one about the schoolchildren who suspect that their principal has committed various sinister crimes—”

“The _Luke Storme_ books.” Ms. Hendricks gives a delighted-sounding laugh. Her eyes are a clear greenish gold toward the center of the iris, like a certain glass vase his mother had when he was a boy. “What in the world did you see in those covers that made you want to commission me for an office painting?”

Harold winces. _Office painting_ conjures bleak images of treacly landscapes and perfunctory city scenes. 

“Well, it’s not a corporate purchase,” he explains. “That is, it’s more for me more than for the office. When I retire, the painting will come with me.” _Too defensive,_ he thinks, _I need her to be forthcoming._ “The truth is, I don’t know very much about contemporary art, but I like your paintings very much. There’s so much going on in them—they’re beautiful and sincere and strange all at once. As if _The Little Prince_ were illustrated by El Greco. I just thought, whatever you paint for me, I’ll probably never get bored of looking at it.”

When she doesn’t reply straightaway, Harold thinks he’s misspoken. Oversold himself, perhaps. An apology is on the tip of his tongue when Ms. Hendrick gives a small shake of the head, like she’s emerging from a thought. She gives him a smile not quite so full of teeth as when she first walked into his office, but more genuine.

“I’m starting to think this meeting might actually be fun,” she says. “Let’s go get that coffee and talk about what I’m gonna paint for you.”

*

**Sognare Cafe  
9:33 a.m.**

Grace’s clothes and hair smell like the cold March wind, a sharp contrast to the recycled air blasting through the cafe’s air vents. Harold finds himself breathing deeply as he holds the cafe door for her and she passes in front of him.

The last time Harold saw Grace Hendricks had been another cold morning. Not quite like this one. There was no wind, that day. The promenade was so deserted that Harold had been surprised to see Arash there with his truck. But when he turned around and saw Grace, dabbing at her canvas, he hadn’t been surprised at all. She’d looked as if she belonged there, as much a part of the landscape as the water itself. He’d been so tempted to introduce himself; but it also seemed selfish to disturb the delicious quiet she inhabited. And there was a lifetime of restraining habit to hold him back. 

Harold still rubs his thumb over the surface of that memory from time to time, when he’s reaching for a moment’s peace. _The Painter By the Water_ : the memory like a painting itself, the bittersweet signpost of a road not taken.

The Machine stopped trying to nudge him in Grace’s direction after that day. But just before dawn, he’d walked past a ringing payphone on his way to the bakery. He picked up, and the Machine recited the old familiar number string, and ever since that moment Harold’s heart has been in his throat.

To have the living Grace here, standing next to him in the coffee line, tilting her head back to gaze at the chalk menu over the barista’s counter—it’s a strange feeling. Exciting, and a little unreal. He can touch her, if he wants. Bump their knuckles by accident, graze an arm while turning to look out the glass windows. 

“Think I’ll try their honey macchiato,” Grace announces, in the way of all people visiting coffee shops with new companions. “The tea selection is terrific, though.”

“Yes, they don’t neglect the green teas, which is rare.”

“Is green tea your go-to drink?”

Harold smiles and ducks his head in a kind of nod, then resumes his feigned study of the pastry menu as the line creeps a steady pace toward the cash register.

Standing near her makes him feel unusually tall. Ever since she brushed past him in the doorway, part of him has been speculating how neatly her head might fit into the crook of his shoulder. He wants to brush her hand with his hand, to feel the ordinary texture of skin and bone.

But the only reason she’s here with him is because her life is in danger. He and John are all that stand in the way of whatever is coming for her. To pursue her for his personal gratification under such circumstances would be ethically questionable, to say the least. 

Beside, whatever the Machine’s reasons had been for singling Grace out to him six years ago, Harold had been a different person back then. Significantly less damaged, inside and out. Who’s to say whether they would even suit each other now?

The line creeps forward. Harold asks Grace a banal question about her coffee preferences. About Italy, travel, artists they both admire. Despite her obvious intelligence, she is slightly shy when it comes to subjects other than art and painting. Harold finds himself telling her things about himself, just to keep her talking— stuff that Nathan never knew, and John has never asked, like his feelings about Delft blue, or the German expressionist painters of the postwar era.

By the time they have their coffees and a table, they’re talking as if they were no longer strangers. Which was the goal; he needs her to trust him if he’s going to protect her. Harold’s guilt is irrational.

From her bag, Grace produces a black spiral-bound notebook from her purse and slides it across the table to him. “My sketchbook. If _Luke Storme_ started all of this, maybe you’d like to see some of my less formal work.”

Harold feels like a Victorian gentleman being offered a fleeting glimpse of a lady’s ankle. If the sketchbook were very personal, she wouldn’t show it to him, perhaps. But these pieces aren’t anywhere on her website. Probably only a very few people have ever seen them before. 

Harold finds that he likes that thought. 

He begins to leaf through the pages, lingering over each set of images in turn:

A hot air balloon festooned in blue and gold. A repeating motif of strawberries and ladybugs. A child asleep in a bed held aloft by balloons and drifting across a starry purple sky. A fat red rocket ship that looks like something from 1950s science fiction. A pink-haired young woman in a billowy white sundress lounging in tall grass like an Elizabethan shepherdess. 

“These are simply lovely,” he says, lingering over an illustration of _Hamlet’s_ Ophelia, delicate and transparent in watercolor, surrounded by hard, angry blurs that seem to represent courtiers in velvet breeches.

The next turn of the page jolts him out of his reverie. 

Filling the paper is a photorealistic portrait of a balding, middle-aged man with heavy features and dull, cruel eyes. The likeness has been rendered with great technical skill, in charcoal, or perhaps soft graphite, and coated with a fixative.

The hair on the back of Harold’s neck prickles. 

“Oh, that one’s not—” Grace reaches like she’s going to take the book away. “I meant to take that out.”

“You drew this from life,” Harold says.

Grace’s mouth falls open. “I—yes. Could you just turn the page, I don’t even like looking at it.”

“Someone you know?” He has no right to demand this information, but it’s important, for reasons he can’t quite put into words.

“He was a life model for a few weeks at the atelier where I teach sometimes.” Her voice is flat. “May I have my book back, please?”

“Of course, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be intrusive.” Harold, finally, manages to angle his camera from his lap to take a picture of the drawing. Most facial recognition technology wouldn’t be able to work with a drawing, but Harold’s might.

The person in that drawing has never worked at her atelier in any capacity, Harold would bet his life on that. 

“Thanks. Just need some blank paper.” She smiles brightly, and Harold lets the patent untruth perform its social function. She opens the sketchbook to the back and starts to make quick, broad pencil strokes, creating several sketches in quick succession. “So while we were talking in line back there, a few ideas popped into my head…”

For the better part of an hour, Harold finds himself almost forgetting about the investigation in favor of simply discussing art with Grace Hendricks. Conversing with her on this subject demands his full concentration, so he can’t multitask. She seems to be operating under the flattering but mistaken assumption that Harold can keep pace with the speed of her thoughts effortlessly. Harold, by contrast, finally understands the expression Nathan sometimes wore when Harold presented new project ideas to him. She’s beyond him in this, as much as John is beyond him in matters related to weaponry and tactical assault.

“The idea of some kind of pastoral scene does interest me, as long as it isn’t...” He gestures vaguely, then places his finger on one scrap of paper among the many she has sketched upon and set out for him to study. 

“Twee?”

“Saccharine was the word I was thinking of, but yes.”

Grace’s smile is small and pleased. “I thought you might go for a country scene.”

“Did you? Why is that?”

“Your office doesn’t feel like you,” she says promptly. “You’re not at home there. It made me wonder if, deep down, you were really more of a country boy than an insurance executive.”

Harold goes still. 

“Am I right?” There’s a gentle, teasing note to the question, like she can tell that she’s skirting a delicate subject.

“So much so that I’m feeling slightly exposed at the moment,” he admits.

Grace grins. “I promise not to rat you out. How about a summer background, for the painting? Big blues and golds? Or something autumnal and harvesty?”

“Actually, I think...a snowfield,” he says, after a brief pause.

She tilts her head, curious.

“I sometimes get very nostalgic about the sort of snow we had when I was a boy. My father and I had to shovel a path just to get from the house to the barn.” The image is usefully generic; the nostalgia, which he hadn’t been sensible of until the moment he started speaking, is surprisingly authentic. “You don’t get that in the city—snow that stays clean and undisturbed, apart from a few birds, or deer tracks. There’s something quite otherworldly in how it paints the whole surrounding countryside white, with just the buildings and farm equipment making for the odd flash of color against a grey sky.”

“I can picture that so clearly. You’re from the midwest, right?” His eyebrows go up. “I’m from South Carolina. Sometimes I sound like it, sometimes I don’t. Accents are interesting that way.”

Certain kinds of information never get recorded, even by the all-seeing eye Harold set to watch over the world. Harold has never spoken about his childhood, with anyone, but maybe it would be worth it, if it causes Grace to keep telling him these things about herself, these small facts that slip between the cracks.

“Any other details you’ve got your heart set on, apart from the snow?”

“I think I’d rather trust you.” Harold knows that the odds are against this painting ever coming into being, and he already regrets it. He wishes, very much, to see what Grace Hendricks would paint for him. “You have a gift for this, you know. A few minutes ago, this painting was an entirely abstract concept, but you somehow knew my preferences better than I did. Do your friends know you’re psychic?”

The last part of his remark is such an egregious stretch that Harold is slightly embarrassed by it. But they’ve already been talking for over an hour, and he hasn’t advanced his investigation at all, except to clone the phone she barely uses.

“Me?” she laughs. “No, I don’t think so.” A line appears in her smooth forehead. “Although I met a man in the park this morning, and he definitely had some kind of mind power going for him.”

“That sounds like a story.” Harold takes a sip of his tea, to cover for a sudden spike of adrenaline.

“Well, he said that he recognized me? I do paint on the promenade when the weather’s good, and I guess he might have seen me there with my easel. But he said that he saw a painting of mine on the cover of a magazine and recognized it as my work. Which is kind of—I mean, I’d love to believe that my work is actually that distinctive, but it seems kind of unlikely.”

“Interesting,” says Harold, struggling to keep his tone light. “Did this very perceptive gentleman give his name?” 

Grace shrugs. “He said his name was John.”


	2. Outliers

**HQ  
March 29, 2012  
3:48 p.m.**

John smells like Grace Hendricks’s rose-scented body powder. 

He’d been going through the medicine cabinet in her tiny bathroom when he’d accidentally clipped the shelf hanging on the wall with his elbow. The whole thing came down, including the powder box with its little cotton poof. Five frantic minutes with a washcloth hadn’t done much to get white powder out of dark wool. John had been forced to leave Grace’s building carrying his jacket over his arm. 

Harold will probably say it’s what he deserves for not “diversifying the color palette of your wardrobe, Mr. Reese”.

But the library is quiet. No typing means Harold isn’t around. The scrabble of claws against the floor says that Bear is, though, so Harold must have stopped by earlier this morning. 

John rounds the corner and braces himself for the dog-shaped treat-seeking missile making a beeline for his kneecaps.

He lets Bear take him down, wrestles with him for a few minutes. Poor guy gets lonely when they leave him behind. If John had known he was going to be talking with the number this morning, he’d have brought Bear home with him last night. Women are a lot faster to trust men with dogs. Men too, actually.

And today’s number was a strange case. John could have used the back up, maybe.

Just after 0630, as John was heading back to his place from the gym, a payphone rang. The Machine hadn’t contacted John directly since that time right after Harold was kidnapped, so he’d answered it, memorized the code, and immediately checked on Harold over the earpiece. 

“Two coffee urns and two dozen pastries,” he’d heard Harold saying, in the patient voice he reserves for waiters and cashiers and valets. “And could you have them delivered to this address by nine this morning? Yes, 57th Street. Fifteenth floor. The name is Harold Wren.”

Distracting his employees at the insurance company with overly generous offerings of breakfast food was one of Harold’s tricks for keeping office gossip about Wren’s infrequent appearances to a minimum. It stood to reason, then, that he was doing housekeeping on the Wren identity today. But before John could decide whether or not to interrupt him, his phone buzzed with incoming video messages. 

Three files, actually. Each less than a minute long. 

One: security footage of the Brooklyn promenade from January. A red-haired woman carrying a large flat portfolio case walks into view, heading toward the railing that overlooks the water. Two: date stamped in February, it shows the same woman sitting by the same railing with an easel, dabbing paint onto a canvas. Three: footage from two weeks ago, identical to the second file, except the woman wears different clothes and the painting looks closer to being completed.

The promenade was closer to John’s location than the library, or Harold’s office at Universal, so John had taken the hint and gone to the park. 

When Harold gets back, they should probably talk about the fact that his AI is acting weird again. 

John throws the ball deep into the stacks. Bear takes off after it. John sits on the floor with his back against the wall and listens to the silence, watches dust particles dance in the sunbeams falling through the library windows. The noises of the city outside are muffled by thick stone walls. Only one person in the entire world knows that John is here, or even that this place exists.

He tries to remember if this is what it felt like, being safe.

Bear brings his squeaky toy back, then flops down at John’s side. John threads his fingers through Bear’s fur and tilts his head back, letting his eyes close for a second.

Downstairs, the door opens and clangs shut. Bear’s ears perk up. John climbs to his feet when he hears the approach of shuffling footsteps, and tries to look less eager than the dog.

“Mr. Reese.” Bear bounds over to Harold, and Harold leans down to fuss his ears. 

“Morning, Harold. New suit?”

Harold’s head comes up like he’s startled. “It is, thank you for noticing.” He flattens a hand against his jacket, which is a brighter blue and a bolder check than John’s ever seen him wear before. 

Passing John on the way to his desk, Harold stops abruptly, frowning. He leans in towards John’s chest, and sniffs. 

John holds his breath.

“Roses.” Harold looks up at him, bemused. “Not your usual fragrance.”

His hair had brushed the underside of John’s chin when he leaned down. Now, for some reason, John’s whole face is tingling. 

“I felt pretty today,” John says, in his blandest voice.

“Just today?” says Harold, low and wry. Their eyes meet for a second. Harold’s mouth purses. “We have a new number. Her name is Grace Hendricks.”

“I know,” says John. “Payphone started ringing on my way back from the gym this morning.”

Harold stares. “I didn’t realize the Machine was still making independent contact with you.”

“First time since Sofia Campos.” 

“Hmm.” Harold turns away, thoughtful, and starts dusting his monitor array with an ostrich feather duster. “This case is proving anomalous in several respects. I received Grace’s number at roughly the same time as you this morning. I spent the hours until start of business arranging a meeting with her.” 

“I thought you were being Harold Wren today.”

“Indeed. Harold Wren has commissioned a painting.” Harold seats himself; the monitor array flickers to life. “We met to discuss the specifics over coffee. She mentioned you, as it happens.”

“Did she?” John brightens.

“She was intrigued by the strange man in the suit who recognized her painting from the cover of _The Boroughs_ magazine. The coincidence struck her as somewhat unlikely.” Harold’s eyebrows make it clear what he thinks about John’s cover story. 

“I was working on no intel.” John allows a little defensiveness into his voice. “The magazine cover came up in a Google search. I improvised.” 

Grace hadn’t seemed suspicious while he was talking to her. Either second thoughts caught up with her afterwards, or she’s able to conceal her real feelings well enough to fool John, which is both impressive and concerning. 

“I’m not sure I understand why you felt it necessary to speak with her at all, when you could simply have observed her from a distance.” Harold’s tone is peevish. “And if you didn’t have any background on her, how _did_ you know she would be on the promenade this morning?” 

“The Machine gave me a pretty good hint,” John says lightly. “Sent me security footage of Grace painting by the water. Multiple videos, going back three months.”

“That shouldn’t be possible,” says Harold sharply. 

“And I introduced myself to Grace because when I got there, she was crying.”

Harold’s mouth falls open. “Oh,” he says in a small voice. “But when I met her later, she seemed…”

He trails off, and blinks twice at his monitor.

John drifts over to the window behind the desk, where the sunlight is a bright contrast to the icy drafts leaking in at the loose corners of the sill. He keeps thinking about getting a space heater in here for Harold, only Harold always says that “computers like the cold”. 

“Grace volunteers with foster kids.” John drops his voice. “Recently, she filed a report on a social worker for denying a prescribed medication to one of the children she works with. The girl died a couple of months ago, so there’s an inquiry pending.”

This makes Harold turn in his chair. “Did you get the social worker’s name?”

“Sarah Hibbert. There’s a bio on the DCS website, but it doesn’t say much. Figured the name was all you needed.”

“Indeed.” Harold’s mouth compresses into a thin line. “And here I’d placed her volunteer work at the bottom of my list of investigative priorities. Stupid of me.”

John watches him pull up six search windows at once. It’s not like him to be this anxious, this early in an investigation. 

“Did you get anything out of her during your coffee date?” he says lightly.

“Nothing terribly informative. We discussed the painting, and art in general. I fear she may have learned more about me than I did about her.”

John’s eyebrows shoot up. “Like to know how she managed that,” he says, half to himself.

“To be quite honest, so would I.” The twist of Harold’s mouth makes his discomfort clear. “I suppose that judging people according to their reactions to art is part of her job, but I wasn’t...quite prepared, I suppose.”

John huffs a laugh. “You telling me you didn’t cultivate separate taste profiles for all your identities?”

Harold touches the back of his neck, quick, like something bit him. John realizes he’s practically breathing down Harold’s collar—close enough to smell his Serge Lutens, or whatever guys as rich as Harold wear. 

“I did,” he says, shoulders hunching. “The decorators I hired for each identity had algorithmically distinct aesthetic profiles. But before Grace would accept my commission, she insisted on interrogating me about color palettes, and my favorite time of day based on the quality of sunlight, and my feelings about Baker-Miller pink. I had no choice but to answer sincerely. Faking that many opinions, let alone in a consistent manner, would have been impossible.”

John’s forehead wrinkles. “What kind of pink?”

“Exactly, Mr. Reese.” 

Harold looks at John for a moment, hesitating. “What about you? Anything interesting happen during your interlude in the park?” There is something strange in Harold’s tone, like he’s trying to sound as if he’s teasing when he’s not, really. “She mentioned that she’d agreed to have lunch with you tomorrow. I suppose something must have gone right.”

“I just introduced myself, Finch. It wasn’t hard. She’s pretty easy to talk to.”

“I suppose she must have been. You certainly made an impression.” Harold studies him for a moment. “Given that, perhaps we should have Detective Fusco keep an eye on her apartment. It wouldn’t do to risk her seeing you. If she spies you loitering on the curb outside her building your attempts to be charming might begin to seem sinister.”

_Attempts?_ John thinks. “I’m actually pretty good at only being seen if I mean to.”

Harold makes an impatient noise. “Of course, Mr. Reese. But in this case…” His hands grow still over the keyboard. 

“In this case?” John says.

His mouth compresses. “I simply believe it would be best if we—if we were to leave as little disruption in our wake as possible.”

That settles it for John. “You know her, don’t you?” he says softly.

Harold’s mouth falls open. He looks at John like he’s just performed witchcraft. It would be pretty funny if he didn’t look so defeated at the same time.

“I suppose I should stop being surprised when you do that,” Harold grumbles. 

“You having a personal connection to Grace was the only thing that made sense.” John gives him a crooked smile. “You’re not usually this worried.”

“No.” Harold sighs and turns away from the desk, giving John his full attention. “Today isn’t the first time the Machine has sent me Grace’s number.”

Instantly, John sees a flash of blonde hair, a shirt strap sliding down a bare shoulder. A bloodstained patch of tile in a big, empty house on the waterfront. He pictures Grace’s small, sweet face crumpling in a look of fear, and everything that is gentle in John falls through the pit that has just opened at the bottom of his mind. 

“Grace is a recurring number?” His voice is strained and dry, even in his own ears. “Like Sarah Jennings?” _Like Jessica,_ he doesn’t say aloud.

Harold stares up at him, bug-eyed. “No. No, John. Not like Sarah Jennings.” His lips purse. “Not like anyone we’ve ever encountered in our work together.” 

Slowly he gets up and turns to face the glass board. “Years ago, before I handed it over to the government, if the Machine wanted to get my attention, it simply texted me.” 

“The Machine texted you about Grace?”

“Among other things.” Harold begins to needlessly rearrange a stack of papers. “I was still educating the Machine, so to speak. Teaching it to identify common characteristics, isolate outliers. Grace—is a notable outlier.” Harold’s mouth twists ruefully. “I suppose the Machine was bound to take special notice of her.”

John feels the violence coiled in his shoulders and forces himself to relax, just a little. He trusts what Harold’s telling him, but it isn’t that easy to persuade the killer he’s not needed. 

“No one’s hurting her, then?” he says, voice rough. “You’re sure?”

Harold’s gaze sharpens. “Not that I know of,” he says. “But if we don’t figure out who means her harm, someone certainly _will._ ”

Seeing that particular glint in Harold’s eye allows John to relax back into his skin. He’s watched Harold blackmail government officials, confound the police, the FBI, and the CIA, and topple business empires to protect numbers before. And Grace, clearly, is more than just a number to him.

“I should go keep an eye on her then, while you figure what Sarah Hibbert’s up to.”

“Yes, I suppose you must, but please, John—if we can get Grace through this without her becoming any the wiser, that would really be for the best.”

“Why, exactly? You think she won’t understand why we had to lie to her?” In John’s experience, people are usually pretty forgiving about that stuff once you save their life.

“No, on the contrary. I’m quite certain she would be understanding.”

“So why stay at arm’s length? Wouldn’t you rather talk to her?”

Harold’s face is frozen in a grimace of distaste and—longing? Embarrassment? “Of course I would. That’s exactly why it would be best to limit my contact with her.”

“Because you like her?” John doesn’t bother hiding his confusion.

“Because I—am personally invested in her,” Harold says, between gritted teeth, like he’s frustrated with himself. “And in such cases, I tend to overreach. There is considerable temptation, for a person with my resources, to interfere where interference is neither warranted nor admirable.”

John can’t help the smile that crosses his face. Will Ingram is still working in Sudan, so he takes Harold’s point. Even so, the gulf between how Harold sees himself and how John sees him is massive enough to make Harold’s misgivings seem slightly ridiculous. 

“You got someone locked up in a tower I don’t know about, Harold?” he says, gently teasing.

The look Harold gives him is sharp. It lingers for a long moment, and it takes John in from his scuffed toes to his dusty knees to his shoulders, and finally his face. 

Or maybe not his face. His throat, where his shirt collar opens.

Harold looks back at the computer without saying anything else. John breathes like he’s been running, and wonders why.

“Grace leads a solitary life,” Harold says after a moment. His tone is subdued. “Doesn’t go out much in the evenings. Doesn’t seem to date. You should have a quiet time of it.”

John nods an acknowledgment. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking—that that sounds like a pretty nice way to spend an afternoon, actually. 

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I learn anything of significance,” Harold says. 

John decides to take this as a dismissal. He says goodbye to Bear, and then to Harold.

“Good hunting,” says Harold. “And John...”

John can see that Harold doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to imply that he thinks John ever does less than his best for a number. But this case is different, and John understands why Harold needs the extra reassurance. When Carter’s number came up, she and John weren’t even friends yet, and John was still a nervous wreck. Knowing the number changes everything about a case.

“I’m not gonna let anything happen to Grace,” John tells him. 

If Grace ever decided to paint a picture of the warm, solid look of approval Harold gives him at that, she could call it, “Why John Gets Out of Bed in the Mornings”.


	3. Art Appreciation

**Brooklyn Public Library  
March 29, 2012  
7:27 p.m.**

By some weird coincidence, Grace Hendricks’s neighborhood in Brooklyn is also John’s old neighborhood. There’s a lot he doesn’t remember clearly about his first weeks in New York, but the streets and buildings here feel familiar. He sees a dumpster he might have pissed behind one time.

Grace has been camped out at the public library all afternoon. (A regular one, without any dogs or reclusive billionaires hiding in the stacks. People actually take the books home with them when they leave. It’s weird.) Positioned on a camp stool near a set of huge glass windows, she bends over the drawing pad balanced across her knees, her hand moving over the paper in broad arcs. If anyone tries sneaking up on her, John, watching through his binoculars, will notice a long time before she does. 

He wonders what she’s drawing. Good thing it was Harold and not John who took her on that coffee date—Grace would have figured out quickly that John knows nothing about art.

Jessica had. She could draw, anyway. Whenever she was stuck on the phone, she made turtles and ladybugs and butterflies appear on the backs of napkins. Jessica said they didn’t count; they were just doodles. _Like you draw in class when you’re supposed to be taking notes._ John said, _I wouldn’t know, I was a model student,_ in this fake-innocent voice, and it made her laugh that weird, loud laugh of hers. He barely graduated from high school, and she knew it.

John grits his teeth and turns the radio on low. Some top 40 hit he doesn’t know becomes a soothing blur of white noise. Restlessness is starting to kick in. He only takes the Camry out of the garage when he needs to blend in on a stakeout. It’s almost old enough to vote and smells like the ghosts of Marlboros past. He hasn’t smoked since the eighties, but after a couple of hours with the windows up, he always wants a cigarette. 

When his earpiece chirps, he greets Harold with unfeigned relief.

“Mr. Reese,” says Harold brightly. “You’ve been stationary for three hours, I take it all is well with our number?”

“Is that what we’re calling her now?” Harold had used her name, back in the library, John couldn’t help noticing. 

“I was merely trying to be professional, but your input has been noted.” Harold sounds slightly strangled. “I thought it might interest you to know that I was able to access the work email accounts of several employees at Kirkwood Children’s Home, including the director, Frank Fisher, and Sarah Hibbert, the staff member whom Ms. Hendricks named in her report.”

John straightens, hand twitching toward the ignition. “Does that mean you’ve identified one of them as the threat?”

“I’m afraid that remains inconclusive, though it’s safe to say that Ms. Hibbert is incensed. She refers to Grace by a number of uncharitable names—yes, thank you, and I’ll take the check now, please.”

“Harold?” 

“I beg your pardon, John, I find myself multi-tasking.”

“Where are you?”

“Concluding a productive meal. Thank you, you as well. Keep the change.” Muffled noises on Harold’s end, and then the background changes to the familiar, quiet hum John associates with sidewalks in midtown at a certain hour of the early evening. 

“I thought you just ate? You and Grace?”

“No, we had coffee.”

John smiles from behind his hand. “Right.”

“A great deal of coffee over the course of several hours, not to mention a pastry or two. But coffee all the same,” Harold says primly. “As I was saying: Ms. Hibbert and Mr. Fisher are having an affair. They’ve been smart. There are no digital traces of their entanglement. But I now have access to their dedicated email accounts and burner phones. If they’re conspiring against Grace, that is where I will likely find the evidence.”

A chill touches the back of John’s neck. “I’ve been sitting on my ass all afternoon. You should have put me on it.”

“Apologies, John. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I ate very lightly, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Not really. I don’t like you going into the field when I’m too far away to cover you.”

“I’m aware.” Harold doesn’t apologize again, but his voice is kind. “However, I didn’t feel comfortable calling you away from your post to perform a simple task I was capable of doing myself.”

John shakes his head. “They’ve got to be the threat, Finch. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our girl’s a saint. No debt, no bad habits, no social life, no boyfriends or girlfriends. Did I mention she’s at the library right now?” He huffs. “She’s probably gonna head home before dark and make herself a nice cup of hot chocolate.”

“Yes, in all likelihood. She’s got an early morning ahead of her. Friday is her day to volunteer at the shelter, from nine until noon. I overheard Frank Fisher telling Sarah Hibbert that he intends to speak with Grace first thing tomorrow. I believe he’s going to try to persuade her to retract her complaint.”

“And if she doesn’t play along? Does Frank Fisher have any registered weapons?” 

“No, and given the pains he’s taken to protect his and Sarah’s professional reputations, I doubt he will attempt to harm her there.”

John drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “If those two are having an affair, maybe it’s them I should be keeping an eye on. They get together tonight, they might end up talking each other into doing something stupid.”

Harold makes a skeptical noise. “I don’t see any reason to waste your energy on overnight surveillance. I can audit them remotely. I think you’d do better to see that Grace makes it safely home and then get some rest yourself.” A slight pause. “After all, you’ll want to be fresh for your date tomorrow.”

“Jealous, Harold?” he asks lightly. 

“I don’t know, John.” Harold’s voice is dry as dust. “Are you planning to give me a reason to be?”

John doesn’t know what to say to that, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“I suggest you make plans to be conveniently in the area when Grace leaves the shelter. I think it’s a safe guess that she might be especially pleased to see a friendly face when she leaves her meeting with Fisher.”

John gets a new text message alert before he can acknowledge these orders. (They don’t sound like orders, but with Harold they rarely do). Harold has sent him a photo of Frank Fisher and Sarah Hibbert, sitting across from one another in a diner booth.

Fisher is in his fifties, tall and thin with wispy, balding hair. He wears a cardigan and a clip-on tie. He’s looking at Sarah Hibbert—late thirties, tired brown eyes and short, brownish-blonde hair—with an expression John has no trouble reading. It reminds him of how he used to feel around Kara when he couldn’t figure out what she wanted from him, which was pretty much always.

Neither of them look like killers. But if John knows anything, it’s that most people will do pretty much anything they think will benefit them, as long as they think they can get away with it. It’s no less true of soccer moms than it is of terrorists.

Harold doesn’t say anything else, and neither does John. The connection stays open. John’s going to be on alert until Harold is back in the library with Bear, and Harold knows it, so this is him being nice, probably.

John still has eyes on Grace. Her hair makes her easy to spot even without the binoculars.

Sometimes, on stakeouts, he plays this game where he mentally renovates the library. The books can stay, but the unused upper floors full of broken furniture and dustcloths he divides into living rooms, game rooms, bedrooms. He fantasizes about installing cabinets, painting walls, drilling studs to secure bookshelves, and cooking dinners big enough to feed everyone he’s ever loved. There’s a table big enough to seat all of them on the second floor.

Regrets are pointless. You can’t take back even one wrong decision, no matter how small. That being the case, if you’re making up fairy tales, you might as well go all out. In John’s dreams, he brings Jessica back to life along with his whole family, and all the friends he lost in combat. He moves Zoe and Carter into their own guest apartments and moves Fusco and his son in across the hall. Jess would still be a nurse, because she loved being a nurse, but she’d have better hours and long beach vacations whenever she needed them. 

And Harold would continue to spend his days behind a desk, surrounded by monitors and books. He and John would still work the numbers together. But no one would get killed, and no one who didn’t deserve it would ever get hurt. 

John’s fantasies aren’t that different from real life, except in all the ways that matter.

At ten minutes to the hour, Grace stretches her arms over her head, shuts her notebook, and starts gathering up her black portfolio case and the stack of library books at her feet. Done for the day, it looks like. She lives a fifteen minute walk from the library—not worth trying to tail her in a vehicle. John checks his keys and his gun, trades his suit jacket for a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of glasses, and gets out of the car.

“Hey, Finch,” says John, starting down the sidewalk. “Why did the Machine send you Grace’s number before?”

Harold doesn’t respond right away. “I believe I told you. The Machine was identifying outliers.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” He has to hop awkwardly to one side to avoid a kid riding his bike illegally down the sidewalk. 

“I’m quite certain you know what an outlier is, Mr. Reese.” 

Harold hasn’t been this cagey and evasive with him since before John got shot during the Gates case. He grins. 

“Is she your type, Harold? You like artists?” 

“Yes, as a matter of fact. But I’ve presented myself to Grace as a _client_ ,” Harold emphasizes. “Paid work in this day and age is difficult for artists to come by. Exploiting our professional relationship for my personal benefit would be the act of a scoundrel.”

 _Scoundrel,_ John thinks, incredulous. “No need to get riled up, Harold. I just wondered if the Machine was playing matchmaker. ”

“Possibly. It took years to work all the bugs out.” Harold’s voice turns wry. “In any case, there’s something quite ironic about you subjecting me to this line of questioning, given that you’re the one who persuaded her to have lunch with you. Does Grace admire _you_ , John? You’re the acknowledged expert on these matters.”

He doesn’t mind Harold turning the ribbing back around on him, but a glib reply dies on the tip of his tongue.

Yesterday at the park, when John first caught sight of Grace, he’d thought of his mother. She used to take John to church with her after his dad died. He was only ten, so he’d sit quietly in the back and watch while she said her prayers, strangely comforted by the knowledge that, afterwards, she would smile and look peaceful, and things would be okay again.

Grace had been crying when John first laid eyes on her. But as he watched her looking out over the water, it seemed to him she had the same kind of look about her. Like she was in the presence of something sacred. John almost felt like he should be keeping a respectful distance from her and the deep, calm silence she’d gathered around her. 

But he’d introduced himself anyway. He had to get close if he was going to keep her safe. 

Grace was wary of him at first. Now that John knows more about her life, he understands why. For more than twenty years, she’s lived in New York without a partner, a roommate, or even a cat. But she’d opened up to him with a little encouragement. Voicing her frustration with colleagues who cared more about procedures and pensions than about the well-being of the children in their care, she forgot to be shy. She was intelligent, and kind, and John wanted to understand her better. Asking her to lunch hadn’t been the plan, but it felt like the natural next step. He was relieved when she said yes. Sometimes it’s obvious when people are attracted to him, sometimes it isn't. He has a feeling Grace wouldn’t let on easily either way.

“I don’t know,” John admits to Harold. “I think maybe she wants to draw my nose. You get any further in your research?”

“I suppose. Why, what do you want to know?”

“Just curious. She seems really isolated.”

There’s a brief pause in Harold’s typing. “Her finances would scarcely support a glamorous lifestyle,” he muses. “And I must imagine that a great deal of her time is devoted to making art.”

“She’s lonely,” says John. He recognizes lonely people when he meets them.

“It may seem to us as if there is little reason why a woman of Grace’s beauty and talent would lead such a retired life. But for some, the company of other people does not create a feeling of security.”

John doesn’t say, _Like you?_ He already knows that Harold was talking about himself. That’s what makes their conversation in the library so interesting. John asking Grace to lunch in the course of a case is a little unusual, but for Harold to have the same impulse, and to act on it?

Since John’s known him, Harold’s never talked about his personal relationships. Apart from Nathan and Will Ingram, John can’t tell that he ever had a single friend. But he talks about Grace like he’s known her for years. Like she’s the same as him, cut from the same cloth. John can see it. What Harold does with code and computers is as much an art as a science. And Grace has the same otherworldly air about her that made John afraid Harold might vanish into thin air at any moment, back when they started working together. Half of what they say goes over John’s head, and the other half stirs him to feel and to think in ways he never has, or hasn’t in years. No wonder their coffee date lasted three hours.

The next time he’s on a stakeout, maybe he’ll find a room in the library for Grace, too.


	4. The Problem of John

**[location: redacted]  
** March 29, 2012  
9:45 p.m. 

_WEST PROMENADE CAM 27, timestamp 07:02:43: a woman with red hair walks into view. She proceeds east to a railing overlooking the water, where she remains, alone, for 00:10:08 minutes. At 07:12:33, a tall man in a long dark coat approaches her. They speak together (audio data corrupted) for 00:13:39 minutes, at which point the man touches the woman’s arm lightly, guiding her toward the EAST WALK park exit._

Harold has been watching the looped security footage of John’s encounter with Grace at the park for no good reason, save that he finds the image of the two of them together—-compelling. Not in an entirely comfortable way, though he hasn’t put his finger on the source of his discomfort yet. 

John’s body language is careful when he first approaches Grace, almost deferential. A dangerous man trying to communicate harmless intent. Grace’s posture is naturally defensive, but the longer John speaks to her the more relaxed she looks. 

It is a short story with a predictable ending: the two of them walk out of the park arm in arm, disappearing together from the camera’s eye.

 _Jealous, Harold?_ suggests the voice of Nathan that lives at the back of Harold’s head.

It occurs to him belatedly that John had not specified which of the two of them he thought Harold was jealous of. Nor is that distinction at all clear in Harold’s own mind. Which thought makes him more anxious: Grace being stolen away by John, or John becoming, in some part, lost to Harold because he is now devoted to Grace?

Perhaps he has been studying the footage from the park because he is trying to find fault. 

It’s just that they don’t really look like a natural couple, do they? All the women he has known John to associate with possess the same showy, obvious good looks as John himself. Zoe Morgan springs to mind as an example. Grace, lovely though she is, doesn’t quite fit the type. He finds it as difficult to imagine Grace in a pair of Louboutins and a black cocktail dress as it is to imagine John in a beret and painter’s smock.

Not to mention the difference in their heights. “Honestly, he looms over her,” Harold mutters, eyes trained on the screen. “How do they even hold a conversation?”

“You say something, Harold?”

He flushes, vivid scarlet, and closes the window as rapidly as if John were in the room. “Ah, merely thinking aloud, Mr. Reese. Where is Grace now?”

“She’s in for the night,” says John. “You can take over monitoring her by phone. I’ll check in at the library in the morning.”

“Oh.” Sheer force of habit has Harold calling up surveillance of the street in front of Grace’s apartment building, but John isn’t visible to any cameras. “You’re quite sure she’s not going anywhere? It’s still fairly early in the evening.”

“I watched her go into the bedroom and come out again wearing sweatpants and a fluffy polka dot bathrobe, so, yeah, pretty sure.”

“I see. You sound like you have somewhere to be. Did you come up with another lead?”

“Not exactly.” There’s an evasiveness in John’s tone that Harold hasn’t heard since their earliest days working together. “I’ve got some personal errands to run while I’m in the neighborhood.”

“Oh,” says Harold, taken aback. Since he met John, he’s not sure he’s ever heard him define any of his interests as personal before. “I’ll leave you to it then. Call me if you need me.”

John doesn’t say goodbye, but he doesn’t end the connection either. He simply falls silent, and presumably continues to go about his business. 

Harold decides to do the same.

He turns his attention back to the monitor display, where a slew of preliminary results from the facial recognition algorithm are awaiting his perusal. Since he’s working from a drawing, not a photograph, he’s unlikely to get a 99% match, so he’ll have to narrow down the top results manually. A simple cross-reference using Grace’s first and last name as keywords will do to start. Harold just hopes the man in the drawing doesn’t actually turn out to be a paid model for a life-drawing class, or he will feel foolish.

Speaking of foolishness: if this comes to anything, Harold will have to explain it to John. _“Grace is frightened of this man,”_ he imagines saying. _“I can just tell.”_

Muffled noises draw Harold’s attention back to the comms. Not, as is too often the case when John is on the other end of an open line, disturbing noises—thuds, groans, voices sharp with distress and anger. Rather, they are the ordinary sounds of quiet conversation, the rustling of paper bags, the clink of glass bottles. 

Harold blinks. Could it be—is John actually shopping for groceries? 

He opens his mouth to ask, then shuts it again. John so rarely makes any kind of effort to go through the motions of having a normal life. The last thing he needs is for Harold to make him feel self-conscious about it. And yet, he can’t help his curiosity. Is John buying instant coffee and a stack of frozen dinners? Or is this one of his rare nights for cooking? John doesn’t seem to bother for himself, but he’d cooked for Sofia Campos, and for Maxine Angelis. 

Perhaps John anticipates having an opportunity to cook for Grace.

Perhaps Harold should get over himself instead of feeling threatened by this idle speculation.

“My friend said she was sending someone to give me a hand,” John says suddenly, and it takes Harold a startled moment to realize that he’s speaking to someone else. “Are you him? Good. We’re going to the warehouse on 39th. You know where I mean.”

Not cooking then, it seems. Harold shakes off his bewilderment and looks at his algorithm results again. 

Ranked at the top of the list is a 79% match to a man named—he blinks and double checks— _Paul Hendricks_. Grace’s seventy-five year old retired father. But Harold has Friendczar photographs of all Grace’s closest family members. Surely he can’t have been so careless as to overlook an obvious resemblance?

Ah, but here is the explanation. In every photograph featuring Paul Hendricks, from his driver’s license to the picture on his company website, he appears to have a full head of hair and a broad, friendly smile. But, take away the hairpiece, add a few pounds and a very bad mood…

 _Why_ was Grace so uncomfortable with Harold seeing a drawing of her father?

Harold rubs the back of his neck where the deep ache is beginning to settle, and opens a new window to begin an in-depth check of Paul Hendricks’s finances. Where middle aged men are concerned, financial records are always where the bodies are buried.

All at once, there’s a burst of sound coming through John’s end of their connection. The audio has an echoey quality, so he’s probably indoors, a big empty space with a high ceiling—he’d said something about a warehouse earlier. Harold can make out a multitude of voices, a pleasant susurrus in his ears as he selects the proper tools to dismantle the digital security of the small South Carolina credit union where Mr. Hendricks does his banking.

“John?” says a woman’s voice in a slow, gentle croak. 

“Hi, Joan.” The sound of John’s voice makes Harold stop typing. “Thanks for hanging onto that phone.”

“Figured you must have some reason for leaving it here. What is all this?”

“Just found myself in the neighborhood. I thought some of this stuff might come in handy. Uh, happy New Year.”

A rusty laugh. “It’s March, ya big dummy.”

“Yeah, well. My mom used to say that if she got all her Christmas cards in the mail by Lent, it still counted. Here, can I show you something? Those fire barrels are rusted out, they won’t be safe to use for much longer. I brought you some portable camp stoves. You know how they work?”

“Benny does. This is real nice of you, John.”

“I have free time on my hands these days. Listen, Joan, it’s going to get below zero this weekend. This key’ll get you into a hotel room. It’s paid up through next month. I told ‘em you were coming, nobody there is gonna hassle you.”

“Oh, now, John.”

“Please. Do it for me.”

Harold silences his earpiece and pulls it out. The raw pleading in John’s voice is more than he can bear, and not meant for him besides.

He knows, of course, that John was once homeless. He also knows that John neither spends the money Harold pays him, nor leaves it to sit and accrue interest in his bank accounts. The obvious conclusion is that he’s giving it away. Harold simply hadn’t considered the mechanics of its dispersal. 

He feels quite embarrassed by that, now.

Nathan had a policy of quietly offering long term housing to anyone homeless found sleeping on IFT properties. Since his death, Harold has continued to fund the non-profit Nathan established to get it done. He could have made arrangements for Joan and everyone in her camp long ago if he’d thought of it, or John had said anything. Well. He knows, now. As soon as Grace is safe, he’ll send his people out. He might not mention it to John. There’s an art to persuading people to accept the gifts you want to give them, and Nathan was a genius at it. Harold is not. 

He sits quietly for a moment, contemplating the problem of John Reese. Trying for once to face his feelings without becoming hopelessly overwhelmed by them.

John has nothing to atone for, as far as Harold is concerned. He’s lost so much, sacrificed so much in the service of others. Harold had meant to give John a job, not some sort of redemption quest. But very well: Harold understands that guilt is not rational. What he can’t accept is how little room there is left in John’s life for John. Sometimes he imagines grabbing John by the shoulders, saying: _Stay with me, **live** with me._ But the nature of their work means that almost every day, Harold says the exact opposite: _face this danger, take this risk._

Not knowing what else to do, Harold is reduced to thrusting comforts and indulgences on John, waiting with bated breath until John gives him that familiar, baffled smile and doesn’t reject them. 

John _says_ that he’s happy.

Harold just thinks he could be happier.

Maybe—Harold’s stomach sinks—maybe that’s why, with Grace. Maybe John is, finally, reaching for a happiness deserving of the name. A small, selfish part of Harold wants to stomp its feet and demand to know where _his_ happiness is supposed to come from, if not from either of them. But that part of Harold doesn’t get to speak. Of the three of them, Harold and John and Grace, Harold is the one that made every single one of his choices with his eyes wide open. 

In this strange afterlife he and John are in, Harold is the one who had enough forewarning to purchase real estate.

He takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes. A few clicks, and Harold is looking at a simple spreadsheet of Paul Hendricks’s most recent bank transactions. When he’s finished looking this over, he thinks, he should probably go to bed.

Approximately thirteen hours ago—which would have been around the time Harold was walking from his hotel to the library, past a certain bank of payphones, and John was returning home from the gym—-Paul Hendricks had purchased a round trip ticket out of Charleston International. 

Destination: New York.

“John.” Harold half rises from his desk. His voice rings out, high and sharp in the quiet of the library. There’s a crackle over the earpiece, John letting him know that he’s listening. “John, I think I’ve got something. Come home as soon as you can.”


	5. Caretaker Types

**Kirkwood Children’s Home  
March 30, 2012  
11:38 a.m.**

Grace shoves the glass door open and stalks out onto the sidewalk, eyes so blurry with anger and tears that she almost walks into an old man hunched over a walking frame.

“What the hell, lady.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry—”

“You crazy?”

She blinks wet eyes and waits while he gets clear of the doorway, muttering under his breath.

He’s got the right idea, Grace decides. Walk it off. That’s the best cure for shock. 

A block and a half later, she pauses for breath and finds the back of a wooden bus bench under her hand. The wind is bitter today; the tip of her nose is numb.

When Frank said he wanted to meet with her this morning she wasn’t expecting an ambush. Stupid of her. Naive. To think, this time yesterday she actually felt sorry for him: _poor Frank, he must feel so caught in the middle._ Grace’s head rings with everything she hadn’t said back in the office: _how dare you, and who the hell do you think you are, and your wife’s name is Karen, right? Does she know you and Sarah are having an affair? How many kids do you have again, Frank?_

She’s not really a vindictive person, she doesn’t think. But some things just make her blood boil. 

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Grace fumbles for it and sits down, bracing herself. But it’s just Adina, the volunteer coordinator. _Got ur message,_ says the text. _U ok?_

 _Georgia peachy,_ she texts back. _Frank fired me._

_wtf  
frank does not have authority to fire u  
only I can do that!  
!!!_

_He threatened to suspend the volunteer program,_ Grace replies. _And yes I know he’s full of it I just want to wait him out_

 _ok but we need 2 talk,_ is Adina’s reply.

A second later, the phone rings. Grace doesn’t recognize the number, but Adina must be calling from her office.

“Hi?” Grace says, hastily shifting the phone to her ear.

“Gracie.”

Not Adina. And not a familiar voice—too many years have passed for that, and he sounds strange and rough besides, like he slept poorly. But only one person has ever called her that. 

“Glad you picked up,” her father adds.

“Dad,” she chokes out. “Hi, I—sorry, I was just texting with somebody, I thought it was them calling me. Did you change your number?”

“Had to pick up a spare phone, I left mine at home by accident,” he says, cheerfully. “I’m at BWI, on layover.”

“O-oh, yeah? Is Mom in Baltimore with you?” Her phone is buzzing with incoming texts, one after another, but listening to her father is like staring into the eyes of a snake—she has to pay attention or there’s no telling what’ll happen. 

“No, no, this is a work trip, and you know how your mother is. I’m actually meeting with some people in New York.”

“Oh.” Grace’s head snaps up, like she’s going to see him coming down the sidewalk. 

“Yeah, yeah, just for the weekend, and then it’s back to Columbia. I just wanted to call, see if maybe you had some time on Saturday to spend with your old man.”

“Tomorrow?” she says faintly. “I, well, I mean, yeah! Of course!” 

“That’s great, pumpkin. Listen, I’m about to board, but I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, but the line is silent. He’s already hung up. 

Grace puts her phone down on the bench next to her. She takes one deep breath, then another, and shuts her eyes. _Well, at least it’s something different to worry about._ There is no such thing as a good time for her father to come visit her out of the blue like this. Back when she still did Christmases in South Carolina she used to spend weeks before the holiday building herself up to the trip. But the mess with Frank does feel a little further away now, at least. And she doesn’t have to fix any of it right this second. She can sit here, and get her breath back, and take the time to figure out how she’s going to get through it.

Who knows, maybe she’ll get lucky; tonight maybe she’ll come down with a case of food poisoning, or acute appendicitis, and have to cancel. 

Her phone starts vibrating again, reminding Grace that she has unread texts. There are four: two from Adina _(I am taking care of this situation,_ then the smiling purple imp emoji), and two from another unknown number.

_Hi it’s John from the park yesterday  
Are we still on for lunch today?_

A tiny, stunned “oh” escapes her lips. Somehow, she had completely forgotten John.

It’s a testament to how troubled she’s been over the inquiry that she even _could_ forget. Guys like that weren’t exactly lining up to hit on her twenty years ago, much less these days. Even so, she’s not sure why she said yes when John asked her out. Not dating anyone is kind of a habit with her. She was just so unprepared for a man that handsome and well-dressed to hit on her (if that was even what he was doing) that she hadn’t remembered to put up any of her usual defenses around him. Grace had spent half the afternoon drawing profiles with downturned eyes and Italian noses and oddly delicate jawlines. 

And now, here he is, blowing up her phone. If this were happening to her any other day, she’d probably be excited.

Hands trembling, Grace fumbles at buttons until she manages to type out a message. _Hi John! I’m sooo sorry but my morning was crazy and I don’t think I’d be very good company today._ She reads the sentence over a few times, then adds, _Raincheck?_ because you never know how people will react if they think they’re being rejected. 

John replies promptly. _Of course. Is everything okay?_

Grace blinks, not sure if he’s being polite, or if she’s being interrogated. Despite his kindness yesterday when he’d found her having the sniffles, she doubts that he wants to hold her hand while she cries on him two days running. 

She wavers, typing a lot of words and deleting them again. _Yes thanks I’m fine,_ is what she finally settles on.

Not thirty seconds later, her phone rings again. It’s John’s number. Grace hesitates until curiosity gets the better of her innate caution. 

“Hello?”

“That bigshot client of yours isn’t giving you a hard time, is he?” 

John’s voice, gentle and full of humor, is such an unexpected relief that Grace has to squinch her eyes shut against a fresh prickle of tears. She hadn’t realized how badly she needed someone to just be nice to her for a moment.

“Not at all,” she says, managing to tack on a genuine though watery laugh. “Mr. Wren turned out to be very sweet, actually. Very polite.” 

“Glad to hear it,” says John. “So—what happened to you this morning?”

“Oh, that wasn’t anything.”

John makes a little noise that somehow manages to sound both polite and skeptical.

“I had my volunteer job,” she says. “It was—it could have gone better, that’s all.” Fishing around in her purse, she comes up with a few napkins from the cafe yesterday. She turns her face a discreet distance away and blows her nose.

“Where are you now, Grace?” says John.

She blinks. “Well, I—I just left the shelter.”

“On 70th, right? You mentioned yesterday. It just so happens that I’m pretty close by. Let me give you a lift home.”

“Oh,” says Grace, floored. “John, you really don’t have to…”

“I know, but I’d like to. There’s a diner called Poppy’s near your location. Go get yourself a coffee, and I’ll meet you there in just a few minutes. Is that okay, Grace?”

Stammering, Grace agrees, conscious that she has just been gently, subtly manipulated. 

Even as she starts walking towards the diner, she wonders—-not why she’s going along with it. That part’s easy, he’s doing her a big favor. But she does wonder why she isn’t more suspicious about his motives. Maybe it’s because she can’t imagine what someone like John could possibly want with someone like her, unless it just makes him feel good to do nice things for people. Grace gets her drink and sits at a table by the window, warming her fingers around a mug of oily coffee she doesn’t bother to taste. By the time John arrives, she’s filled up three pages in her notebook with simple drawings of birds. Birds always cheer her up.

John is smiling when he slips into the booth across from her. He’s wearing the same sharp black overcoat as yesterday, and a wool scarf in a shade of blue that brings out his eyes. It makes her wonder if he’s married. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who fusses over details like that, and the color match is too precise to be a coincidence. Someone who loves him picked that scarf out for him, someone who wanted him to have something beautiful and soft to wear against the sensitive skin of his face and neck.

“Thanks for waiting on me,” he says.

“Well, you’re not easy to say no to.” She studies him, not trying to hide her curiosity. 

John blinks at her, like he’s taken aback. Or like she’s seen something he wasn’t expecting her to see. 

“I guess I was being pretty pushy,” he says, and his sheepish smile looks almost completely genuine. “You just seemed stressed.”

“You’re a caretaker type, huh.”

His eyes narrow thoughtfully. “That’s actually what I was thinking about you. It takes a special kind of person to work with kids in the system.”

Grace forces herself to drink some of her coffee. It’s terrible, but it helps her dry throat a little. “To be honest, I think I get more out of it than the kids do. They’re so used to adults coming and going, getting attached to people and then never seeing them again. Turnover is really high in this kind of work. Excuse me.”

She drinks her coffee much too fast, trying to cover for the way her throat is knotting up. She’d promised herself, when she started at Kirkwood, that she wouldn’t do that to the kids who got close to her. Back then it never occurred to her that some jackass could just boot her out on a whim.

“You ok?” John rests one big hand on her arm, which is more soothing than it ought to be, and drops some napkins on the table in lieu of tissues. 

“Yeah, I’m sorry—” She dries her face. “A lot of stuff happened this morning. I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.”

John sits there, projecting the same patient, inviting silence as yesterday in the park. Grace can’t help thinking he deserves some explanation for having come all this way. 

“I had a meeting,” she says. “And I guess I kind of got fired.”

“Really?” John’s forehead creases.

“This guy, Frank, the shelter director, he wanted me to change the statements I gave to DCS about Claudia’s social worker.”

“Claudia, that’s the girl you were mentoring who passed away?” says John, like she’d prompted him. 

“Yeah,” Grace sighs. “We went round and round on the subject, and finally Frank told me to just leave and not come back. By then I was so mad I could barely see straight, so I left. Seemed like a better idea than beating him over the head with his own stapler.”

John looks away, smiling behind his hand.

“Honestly, I don’t know what he was thinking. Why would I change my story? When did I give him the impression that I was completely spineless?”

John lowers his hand, expression suddenly pensive, like his head is full of thoughts and he’s trying to decide which of them to say out loud. “He an angry guy, Frank?” 

“More desperate, I think.” Grace frowns. “Why, John?”

“Call it professional paranoia,” he says, rubbing his ear.

They sit in the booth together for a few more minutes, until one of the waitresses starts giving them stink-eye. Grace has no appetite and the food doesn’t look that appealing anyway. When she hints that she’d like to leave, John leads the way out of the diner.

“You expecting somebody to jump out at you, John?” she asks, when he looks up and down the sidewalk, then up at the roofs of nearby buildings. 

“Not really.”

“How long were you in the army?”

He stops walking. “I’m sorry?” 

“Lots of kids go into the military where I’m from. I’m guessing either you were career army, or you were in the reserves for awhile. Otherwise your hair would be a little more adventurous.”

John touches the short hair at the back of his neck.

“Sorry.” She’s not really, but John looks spooked. “Didn’t mean to be all up in your business.”

“You’re not. Just having a little deja vu.” He holds up his keys and gives her a lopsided smile. “I’m parked over here.”

John opens the passenger door for her like the world’s best prom date, and pulls into traffic with the confidence that drives tanks through minefields. 

“What is it you actually do for a living, John?” she asks, after she gives him her address. “Besides chauffeuring weepy artists around the city, I mean.” 

He grins like it’s been startled out of him. “I’m an asset manager.”

Grace nods. “I have no idea what that means.”

“That’s probably a sign you’ve been doing the right things with your life.”

Her phone vibrates before she can answer. Grace slaps her hip pocket like she got bit by a mosquito and silences it without looking.


	6. What I Do Is Me

**Cobble Hill (Brooklyn)  
March 30, 2012  
12:43 p.m.**

As soon as Grace turns the key in the door to her apartment, John pushes gently past her to get inside. He takes a few steps into the kitchen, sweeping it with a glance before looking back at her and smiling.

“Uh, come on in, John.” Grace puts her purse down on the countertop. “What was that about?”

John’s expression is slightly embarrassed, and not even a little bit penitent. “Old habits,” he says lightly. “I like your apartment.”

“Yeah? Thanks. It’s probably more of an art studio with a bed by now, but I kind of like it that way.” She nudges aside a mason jar half-filled with dirty paint water. “Go sit down and I’ll get us some tea.”

He doesn’t sit down. He leans against the wall, watching her with lazy attention as she fills the electric kettle. Then he flinches, scratching his ear like he just got bit by a flea.

“May I use your bathroom?” he says.

“Of course, right behind you.”

They were supposed to have lunch, she remembers, and John probably hasn’t eaten. Neither has Grace, but between the two of them Frank and her dad made short work of her appetite. Her fridge isn’t really stocked for guests—grocery money was tight all last month—but she’d baked a batch of lemon poppyseed muffins yesterday. She pops a few into a cute basket with a checked cloth and puts them on the table with the tea. A guy John’s size probably needs something more substantial to keep him going, but he won’t be here too long. 

Asking her to lunch in the first place was just a funny little whim of his, Grace thinks. An impulsive gesture, nothing serious. She likes John just fine, and he seems pleasant, but there’s no point taking heroic measures to keep their not-really-a-date going. 

When he comes back, she tells him so, as politely as she knows how. 

“It was good of you to come get me and bring me home,” she says. “But I’m really okay now.”

John’s eyes crinkle in a small smile. “You kicking me out?”

“No, of course not. Sit, have some muffins. Here.” She takes a plate from the cabinet and thrusts it at him. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to babysit me.”

“This is not a chore for me.” He sits down, arranging his long legs under her small table.

“I’m a damn delight,” she agrees with a solemn nod.

He laughs and leans back in his chair a little. The tea timer dings, and she removes the strainers from the cups.

John looks thoughtful and hesitant when Grace gets to the table, like he wants to ask her a question but doesn’t know how to say it.

“Something on your mind?” she prompts.

“Maybe.” He half-turns back toward the bathroom door. “You have a piece of paper taped to the mirror.”

“Oh, the poem.”

“Yeah. I was—curious about it, I guess?”

“You mean, why’d I put it where I had to look at it every morning?”

John shrugs and nods. “I don’t know much about poetry. But the part you underlined caught my eye.”

 _“What I do is me: for that I came,”_ she recites on cue. 

“Does it mean something to you?”

Grace wasn’t expecting a sincere question, somehow. She glances over to the stack of canvases leaning against the wall, where she keeps the watercolors from the show at Nerissa’s gallery last year.

“I like to paint birds,” she tells him. “And I like kingfishers in particular a lot. A few years ago, I had a painting in an exhibit and I needed a title, so I just googled until I found something that fit. The poem just...resonated, you know? Lines kept jumping out at me: ‘each mortal thing does one thing and the same”. I think kingfishers are kind of a symbol for...the kind of people who are what they do. Does that make sense? Like with me, art is my career, but it’s also who I am. I could have made more money doing—God, anything else, but anything that wasn’t art felt wrong for me, like I was drifting too far away from myself.”

“‘The just man justices,’” John recites, his voice a deep rasp. His eyes have a faraway expression, like he’s thinking more than he’s saying.

“Don’t you love that?” Too eager, probably, but she’s never had a chance to talk to anyone about this before. “‘The just man justices; keeps grace, that keeps all his goings graces’. Such weird grammar, but that was the part that made me throw up my hands, like—wow, _now_ , I get it.”

John blinks a couple of times. He looks a little dazed. “You okay?” she says, tilting her head.

“Yeah, sorry.” John’s smile is lopsided. “With my job, I don’t get a lot of time to just sit like this, and talk with someone nice. I guess I didn’t realize I’d missed it.”

“That seems like such a shame.”

“It does?”

“You’re smart, handsome. And you’re not exactly struggling to make ends meet, if your suit’s anything to go by.” John blinks and glances down at himself. “If a guy with all that going for him can’t take time for himself when he needs it, what chance does anyone else have?”

“You think I’m handsome?”

Grace laughs. “I could give an art history lecture with slides just about the shape of your nose. And here, the line of your chin—oops, didn’t mean to tickle.”

He jumps slightly when she brushes the skin just above his shirt collar by accident; she’d been tracing his profile in the air. Grace’s hands get involved in her conversations without consulting her, sometimes. 

John looks mesmerized. She’s aware, suddenly, how close together their chairs are. John is leaning in towards her slightly; he doesn’t seem to notice he’s doing it. From this close, she can’t stop looking at his mouth, wide and thin-lipped and slightly parted.

“I’ve got big ears,” he blurts suddenly.

Grace blinks. “Pardon?”

“My...when I was a kid. People said my ears were too big. Said I’d grow into ‘em, but I never did.”

“You’re six foot and change, John, you do any more growing and they’ll have to cut a hole in the top of the door for your head to fit through.”

John gives a loud, abrupt bark of laughter. He covers his mouth and ducks his head, still chuckling quietly. 

Grace just sits there, curious about this development, and noticing things about him in this new light. He really is a delight to look at: dark hair, light skin, black suit, and white shirt coming together in a dramatic chiaroscuro effect. Even his hair fits the motif, the grey at his temple fading into the darker hair behind his ears. 

Connecting with anybody this monosyllabic would take work, but she’s beginning to think she could _really_ like John, given time. 

In a strange way, he reminds her of Mr. Wren from the coffee shop yesterday. _Harold,_ he’d insisted she call him. Not that Harold was monosyllabic; quite the opposite. All during their meeting, she kept expecting him to make his excuses and get back to whatever it is insurance CEOs do with their lives. But her story about studying in Florence got him talking about his first visit to the Louvre, and it had just gone on from there, like a chain reaction, until Grace was forced to excuse herself and run to her next appointment. 

Harold was the sort of client Grace would actually enjoy spending time with socially—artistically literate, but happy to trust her professional decisions. The combination of the two is rarer than hen’s teeth in Grace’s experience. But John is also that way. She doesn’t think he can put himself into words like Harold does, or not as easily. But he’s a man of authority who doesn’t mind coming down to her level, and that’s a nice feeling.

Grace opens her mouth, not really sure what’s about to come out of it. Just then, her phone rings. She looks down, frowning, and her heart starts to pound. It’s the same number her father called from earlier. 

“Not that guy from the shelter?” says John lightly. He’s touching his ear again; poor guy, the teasing must have been intense for him to be this self-conscious.

“No, it isn’t Frank.” Grace wonders if she looks as flushed as she feels. “I don’t really like talking on the phone, they can leave a voicemail.” 

The voicemail notification beeps a moment later. John watches her silently as she listens. Anxiety prickles all up and down her arms. Eventually she puts the phone down, a little surprised that her hands aren’t trembling. 

“Grace?” John leans in. “You okay?

“Yeah, that...that was just my father. Again. He already called me once today. His plane just landed in New York.” Grace huffs and shakes her head. “Like, okay, I haven’t seen you in years, Dad, but sure, let’s have dinner.”

John’s brows furrow. “Why so long since you last saw each other?” 

Grace’s stomach falls. They’re having such a nice time, and she’s really not in the mood to be told how important family is by someone who doesn’t have the first idea what her family is like.

“Lots of reasons,” she says. “I used to go back to South Carolina for Christmas, but it’s been awhile.”

John looks at her, forehead creasing. 

“Well you don’t have to look like I kicked your puppy about it,” she says.

“It just seems strange, you seem really easy to get along with.”

The defensiveness whooshes out of her. “Not if you’re an asshole,” she says, satisfied when he snorts. 

Grace takes their empty tea cups into the kitchen in search of a change in subject. “You hungry?” she says over her shoulder. “I feel bad that you missed lunch because of me. I don’t have a big selection, but I could swing some sandwiches. Oh! How about a grilled cheese, I do a mean grilled cheese sandwich.”

It takes a beat or two for John to answer. “Why don’t you let me order us something?” he says. 

“Oh, I get it. You’re afraid of my cooking.”

“That’s—no.” John is smiling and shaking his head when she looks over at him. “I just don’t think it’s very nice to tell someone I’m taking them to lunch, then make them cook for me.” He wiggles his cell phone. “Anything you’d like. My assistant has connections.”

The truth is, she’s out of pickles, and to really achieve their true knock-out effect, her grilled cheese sandwiches need a dill pickle spear on the side. Maybe John just wants to do this. Maybe turning him down after canceling their sort-of date will make him think she’s not interested in seeing him again.

“French?” she suggests.

John opens his mouth, and Grace watches him decide against saying whatever had first come to mind. “Absolutely. L’Antagoniste?”

“They don’t deliver.”

He gives a very small shrug, and for just a moment he’s the good-looking Wall Street hotshot she’d taken him for back in the park. “It’s not a problem,” he says breezily.

Grace narrows her eyes at his long, poker-ready face. “You don’t _like_ French food.”

John’s eyes widen.

“That’s fine, honestly. I like lots of different things. How about Thai?”

“Back up. What makes you think I don’t like French food?”

“Your face.” Grace shrugs. “You have expressive features.”

“That’s...not what people usually tell me.”

“Most people don’t study faces for a living.”

John shakes his head, smiling ruefully. He starts to say something; then, abruptly, his face falls. He takes his phone out of his pocket and looks down at the screen with a confused expression.

“Something wrong?” she asks.

A quick shake of the head, then he puts his phone away. Slowly he stands up. Sensing an announcement of some kind, Grace shuts the refrigerator and turns to watch him taking a deep breath. 

“Grace, I need to tell you something.”

Her stomach gives a lurch. John’s shoulders are rigid, arms loose at his sides, hands slightly curled. Tension makes her neck seize up. 

“You’re married, aren’t you?” she says lightly. 

“No,” he says. “But there’s some stuff I haven’t told you. I work for the man you know as Harold Wren.”

Grace sets her empty tea mug down on the counter. “Okay,” she says slowly. Calmly. “Is his name not Harold Wren?

John’s eyes are drooping like a hound dog’s. “I just call him Harold,” he says. 

The simple way he says it suggests intimacy; the hesitant smile lifting the corners of his mouth suggests more affection than Grace has ever felt for a person _she_ worked for.

A wild idea comes to her. “Wait, this isn’t some kind of…” _Some kind of Cyrano de Bergerac thing,_ no, she can’t say that out loud. “He didn’t send you here to, like...vet me for him, did he? Because that’s over the line, I don’t need his commission that badly.”

“We help people,” John says quickly. “Me, and Harold, we get information when someone’s in danger, and we protect them until the threat’s been taken care of. I…” He huffs a breath. “I’ve had to explain this to a lot of people. I’m not usually this awkward about it.”

Grace arches her eyebrows. “I’ll reserve judgment,” she says. “Go on.”

John’s face tightens in sudden irritation, and he taps his ear, and deliberately turns away from her.

“I know that,” he grates out, and Grace jumps at the sudden tone shift. “But I can’t just toss her in the back of a taxi.” 

Her pulse speeds up so fast she feels a little lightheaded. Fighting John off isn’t exactly an option—she’d need a running jump just to connect her fist with his face.

“Fine,” he says. “Call out before you knock.”

When John turns back again, his voice is gentle. “Sorry. That was Harold.” He gestures, and now that she’s actually looking, she sees the earbud. “He’s on his way here.”

Harold Wren, in the blue Harris tweed suit. Harold the fussy, slightly nervous man who wanted Grace to paint him a snowy landscape, because it reminded him of the farm where he lived as a boy.

“Why?” is all she can say to that.

John’s face softens. “Because I need to go keep tabs on someone, and it’s not safe for you to be alone right now.”

His pained, earnest expression is just baffling at first. But then she thinks, _he was waiting to pick me up like he knew something was wrong,_ and _he’s so polite usually but he pushed right past me to check out the apartment before I came in._

“You meant me,” she says, stunned. “When you said you protect people. You—think I’m in danger?”

“It’s going to be fine, Grace.” John takes a step toward her, hands spread. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you. We’ll take care of it.”

“No, I mean…” She laughs, because it’s ridiculous. “ _Why_ would you think that?” 

There’s a knock at the door. Grace turns, just in time to watch John flick his jacket open and reveal a handgun in a shoulder holster. 

For a second, her brain becomes one giant, blinking question mark.

“Stay clear,” he says quietly, stepping forward and sweeping Grace behind him. “Who is it,” he calls out, in a sweet, menacing voice.

“It’s me, Mr. Reese,” comes the reply from the other side of the door. Harold Wren’s high, cultured tones are familiar to Grace, even after just one meeting. “Please don’t shoot.”


	7. Mr. Finch

**Grace’s apartment  
1:23 p.m.**

John smoothes his jacket back down over the gun, and Grace sighs in relief. “It’s safe,” he says, in what is probably supposed to be a reassuring voice. “Is it okay if I let Harold in?”

“Go for it,” says Grace flatly. 

Harold looks the same as he did yesterday, which surprises her for some reason. Charcoal hat with black hatband, wine colored scarf, black coat, dark square glasses. He looks at John first.

“New development?” John says.

Harold looks surprised, though Grace isn’t sure if it’s the question or John’s acerbic tone. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I found an address.”

They’re facing one another, communicating with pursed lips and raised eyebrows. Grace gets the feeling that she’s watching a brief excerpt from a long, ongoing conversation. 

“Hello, Harold,” she says, slightly louder than necessary. 

Harold removes his hat and turns on his heel. “Grace,” he says, expression suddenly anxious. “I’m so sorry about all this. Please, would you quickly gather anything you’ll need for the afternoon, and allow us to conduct you to a safehouse? It’s only a temporary measure. I expect you’ll be safely home again before evening.”

“I’m not going to do that,” she says pleasantly. “But it’s nice to see you again.”

Harold flushes. He starts to say something, then stops, visibly flustered. John covers a smile with his hand.

“I understand that you must have questions, and...that you might even feel some justified resentment towards myself and John for concealing things from you.” Harold’s earnest tones soften Grace’s annoyance almost against her will. “I’m happy to explain matters to the best of my ability. But John has pressing business to attend to, and remaining here won’t be safe without his protection.”

“I know how strange this must seem,” John adds. He’s not smiling now. “All we’re asking you to do is hang out for a couple of hours. Think of it as taking a long lunch. And, hey: Harold actually _likes_ French food.”

“The safehouse is in the village, we can do much better than L’Antagoniste,” Harold says, as if this was what she was holding out for.

A few seconds pass. Harold and John look at her with expectant faces. Grace stares back, frowning. The aggravating part is, Grace kind of wants to go along for the ride purely out of curiosity. 

“You said you do this a lot,” she says to John. “Do other people just get in the car with you, go to strange locations, on no information? You say ‘we’re here to help’, and people forget everything they ever learned about stranger danger?” 

John takes this in, nodding thoughtfully. He looks at Harold. “You know, she has a point,” he says, in a tone of exaggerated realization. “Usually, we tell them _why_ they’re in danger.”

Judging from the sour look Harold gives him in response, they had an argument about this recently.

“Very well,” Harold says. He looks at Grace. “We’re still looking into leads. But an hour ago, I discovered that a modestly large sum of money, as well as an email containing a photo of you, with your address, had been sent to a man named Kevin Wiley. I don’t yet know what the money’s for, but I judged it unsafe for you to remain here alone while we find out.”

Grace turn around and takes a couple of steps away from them, into the kitchen. She leans against the counter. Her elbow bumps her blue teapot, making the lid clink.

“Is that name familiar to you, Grace?” John says, his voice gentle.

“We’re cousins,” she says faintly. “I haven’t seen or talked to him in ages, but I…”

In her head, Kevin is still the skinny little boy with the crew cut in the red-and-white striped shirt who’d hunted tadpoles with her at Christmas. By the time she moved to Providence for art school, he was thirteen. That was the last time she’d seen him.

Head spinning, she picks up a dish towel and starts folding it absently. In her periphery, she’s aware of John and Harold both looking at her, worried, like she’s a broken teacup they don’t know how to put back together. 

To think, just a second ago she was finding this whole situation bizarrely funny.

“Grace.” Harold takes a step forward, holding his hat in his hands. “The truth is that I’ve come here a bit prematurely. Normally John wouldn’t break cover unless it became necessary for your safety. I simply wasn’t willing to take even the slightest risk with your safety. I promise that I’m telling the truth when I say that the danger is real, and that neither of us will harm you.”

“I was never afraid of that,” she says. “I just don’t like it when people order me around.”

Harold drops his eyes to the linoleum, like a scolded child. John winces slightly.

“All right, fine,” she says. It’s not like she’s going to get anything done if she stays here. “I’ll go with you. Give me a minute to dig my book out of the laundry basket.”

*

**18 Washington Square Place  
March 30, 2012  
3:31 p.m.**

“I trust that you’re not calling my security habits into question, Mr. Reese.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Finch, but this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where town cars blend into the background.”

They haven’t reached the sidewalk yet, and John and Harold are already bickering. Gently, without resentment, and also without pausing for breath. Under normal circumstances, Grace would be tickled.

“If anything should go wrong, and we were to become separated, I can track my own car to within a few meters. Whereas the trouble with getting into a taxi is that you can’t be sure who’s driving it.”

“I could always check first.”

“Nor do I think it wise to leave a trail of traumatized yellow cab drivers in our wake. We are safest when we are _unmemorable._ I do realize this concept is alien to your usual way of thinking.”

“You’re the boss,” John says, overly deferential. “Where did you park?”

The sky is clear today, after a week of wet, frigid grey weather. There are a few trees on the sidewalk shooting their first tiny spring leaves, and she can see patches of blue sky in the gaps between buildings. It feels strange—as if, for Grace, entire days have gone by since she spent a morning getting yelled at by Frank. The weather shouldn’t be the same as it was then. It should be raining pathetic fallacies.

“Grace.” Something nudges her arm. She looks up to see John beside her, Harold watching from further down the sidewalk, brow creased like he’s wondering if it’s a bad sign that she wandered to a standstill as soon as they turned their backs.

“So Harold has a town car, huh?” Grace starts walking again, and John keeps pace with her. “I wondered if being filthy rich was just part of the act.”

“No,” says John dryly. “It’s not.”

“While it is a fairly simple matter for a clever person to make it appear as if they have more money than they do, the illusion is difficult to maintain at close quarters, or for any length of time. As we are about to visit my home—”

John coughs.

“— _one_ of my homes, you can judge the authenticity for yourself.”

Grace meets Harold’s eyes. He’s smiling very slightly, as if hoping she’ll join in with their teasing banter, or at least approve of it. Dread has snuffed out her annoyance like a candle, so she gives him a small, crooked smile, and sees some of the anxious tension leave his face.

The car is parked nearby, along the curb. John opens the door for her. On autopilot, she climbs into the back seat, and Harold slides in after her. John pulls the car into the stream of traffic, and Grace lets her head loll against the window, watching buildings and cars go by without really seeing any of them.

Eventually, the car stops. Harold gets out of the car, then holds the door open for her. Grace finds herself standing on the steps of one of the rowhouses facing Washington Square Park. A pang in her chest makes her draw a deep breath, and John and Harold look at her, alert as a couple of bird dogs.

“This is my favorite part of the city,” she explains. “I’ve always dreamed of living here.”

John gives Harold an indecipherable glance and starts up the steps ahead of them.

“I hope you’ll find the house comfortable. It does have a lovely view. I’ve not yet spent much time here, but perhaps that will change.” Harold turns to look behind them. His hand on her back nudges her through the door. “The living room windows receive northern exposure, which I’m told is the light most highly preferred by artists.”

Grace feels her stiff cheeks cracking in a smile. “You were listening.” 

“Intently.”

They run into John in the foyer, closing a door behind him. “You’re clear,” he says to Harold. “Text me the address.”

“Already taken care of.” Harold’s mouth flattens. “Good hunting, John.”

“I’ll be in touch. Grace.” John touches her arm fleetingly, then gives her a small smile that makes her want to grab his arm and keep him there. She hadn’t really appreciated that she was going to be here alone with Harold for God knows how long, waiting for John to report back. She can taste the anxiety already.

“I feel like I should go with you,” she blurts out. “I don’t like the idea of sitting around while you do dangerous stuff. And don’t tell me it’s not dangerous, I saw that gun.”

Instead of arguing with her, John’s smile gets a lot bigger. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “This is what I do. Just like your poem said. Besides, someone has to keep Harold occupied while I’m gone, or he’ll start chewing the books again.”

“Oh very funny,” Harold calls after John as he vanishes back into the sunlight. “We’re not even in the library!”

He sighs and catches Grace’s look. “Apologies. We acquired a dog recently. He becomes destructive when bored, and I suppose I complained overmuch to John about it. Shall we?” he gestures.

The house is subdivided into spacious apartments, one upstairs and one downstairs. Harold lets them into the downstairs apartment, where the door opens onto the foyer.

“Please make yourself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.” Harold removes his coat and hat, hanging them next to the door. “There are books, cable television, a selection of movies, tea and coffee in the kitchen, and a comfortable bed and bath. If you need anything else, I can send out for it.”

“Is that safe?” Grace is still hugging her bag. “I don’t know much about being in a safehouse but on TV the FBI agents always get mad when someone tries to call Dominos.”

“John would probably say no,” says Harold, “And I wouldn’t consider it advisable under other circumstances. But you haven’t eaten yet, and I neglected to order groceries.”

“How do you know that?”

“What?”

“That I haven’t eaten.” Grace takes a breath. “You were listening while John and I were talking.”

“I’m afraid it’s standard procedure when John is in the field.” His mouth twists, a rueful sort of _what can you do?_ expression. “Why don’t I leave you to settle in while I tend to some things? I’ll rejoin you momentarily.”

Grace tries to take in her surroundings, but the only detail of the safehouse she can focus on is Harold, arranging a laptop and other things that were in his briefcase into a work area.

Yesterday, she’d complimented him on his pocket square, which was a nice shade of green that matched the check in his suit. Pocket squares aren’t exactly daring, but it’s rare for a suit-and-tie guy to do anything at all interesting with color. Grace likes to encourage artistic inclinations when she finds them. The tie was promising. A little out of character, even, for the kind of man he seemed to be.

Today he’s wearing a brown suit with subtle purple stripes. His tie is aubergine, his shirt is goldenrod, his vest is brushed cotton velveteen in a warm shade of plum. 

Grace knows people, and Grace knows color. He didn’t develop that kind of sartorial daring overnight. Which means that he’d been dressing down yesterday. Wearing the kind of clothes that Harold Wren, the man he was pretending to be, would have worn. 

She watches Harold plug in cords and cables, bundling them together neatly with zip ties. Straightening up, he grips the back of the chair to support himself. His hip seems worse today than when they met yesterday. Grace is strangely glad the limp wasn’t something he’d faked as part of his disguise.

Harold watches her as she paces the length of the living room. She pauses at the wide double windows and brushes her fingertips over the drapes—silk brocade, in a dark floral pattern.

“This is beautiful.” The words slip from her tongue, and she feels a stab of annoyance with herself. She’s not trying to socialize here. She has questions that need answers.

“Oh, do you like it? Harold walks over, not coming too close to her, and touches the other drape panel. “The decorator I hired for the house had the most extraordinary line in textiles...I’m no expert, of course.”

“So you do like art.”

“I beg your pardon?” 

“I’d wondered.” Grace turns around without looking at him. “I mean, yesterday, you certainly seemed to know what you were talking about. So much so that I wondered why you’d even hire someone like me for a commission. You could afford someone famous, established.” 

“To own and display a painting of yours would be a great privilege,” Harold says quietly. “Though of course, you needn’t complete the commission, if you wouldn’t like to.”

“You paid me up front,” she points out.

“That was merely an advance, and it’s yours to keep. Think of it as an apology.”

“What do you have to apologize for? You’re protecting me, right?”

“That is certainly the aim of this endeavor.” He tilts his head. “And to that end, I thought we could go over my research. We might find something helpful to John. Your insight would be valuable.”

One end of the long dining table has been converted into desk space: file folders and legal pads surround a sleeping laptop, and a small pile of disposable cell phones sits to one side. Harold takes the chair at the head of the table; Grace sits to his right, feeling a little like she’s back in high school and here for after-class tutoring.

“No doubt you’re curious how we learned of your situation in the first place,” Harold says.

Grace just nods. “John said you got information about people who were in danger.”

“Indeed. The details must remain confidential, but I can tell you that we are given identifying numbers. Social security numbers, usually. They’re produced by—a proprietary technology that I created. I can’t say any more about that, but I can tell you that the information is never wrong, and the danger it warns of is never less than deadly.”

John had walked up to her in the park and asked if her koi painting had been on the cover of _The Boroughs_ ; she’d been delighted. Almost as delighted as when she’d checked her email at the crack of dawn and found a message from Harold Wren, requesting an urgent meeting about a commission. _Guess it’s obvious what my weakness is,_ she thinks, and resists the urge to sulk.

“So you got my number and sent John to talk to me?” she says.

Harold stills. “Actually, your case has been somewhat unusual, in a few respects. Both John and I received your number at the same time this morning. I can’t say that’s never happened before, but normally the numbers come to me. I do the research, so John is prepared when he goes into the field. In this case, we each made separate arrangements to...ensure that we crossed your path. I first learned that you and John had met when you mentioned his name, at Sognare’s.”

His tone makes her look up. Harold’s mouth is so pursed that he looks like Ms. Eunice, the little old lady who lived next door to Grace growing up. 

“You didn’t want John to talk to me?” she says, baffled.

Harold starts to speak, then stops himself, like he’d changed his mind about whatever he’d started to say. “It’s customary for John to take point in the field during our operations. However, in this case, I had hoped to fulfill that function myself.”

“Any reason?”

It takes a long moment before he answers. “I wanted the two of us to become personally acquainted.”

Grace’s stomach swoops. 

They’d talked each other’s ears off at the cafe yesterday morning. Grace couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed a conversation more. Everything Harold had to say was interesting; everything she had to say, he’d listened to attentively. Courteous, kind, and smart as hell, he’d made her feel like they’d connected on a personal level. Grace had left the cafe hoping Harold wouldn’t just vanish back into the ether after she finished his painting, that there would be more conversations like that in their future.

The feeling was mutual, apparently. Or—no, Harold said that he wanted them to meet. So he already knew all about her when they met in his office.

She studies him through narrowed eyes. Harold withstands it for a moment, then turns back to his laptop, cheeks slightly pink. 

“I’m afraid there’s little we can do here until John reports back,” he says. “If you—if there’s anything else you wished to know—”

“You still haven’t told me about Kevin,” says Grace. “Do you have anything other than that email to make you think he’s the reason you got my number?”

“Nothing concrete. John will follow him, discreetly, and intervene if he gets into any trouble.”

“Well, you said he got money, do you know who paid him?”

“Perhaps.” Harold stops typing, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. “Do you happen to know what Kevin does for a living?”

“Last I heard, he was a handyman for a home repair business. My dad’s, actually. I think he hired Kevin as a favor to my aunt after Kevin got out of prison.”

Harold nods, but doesn’t say anything. He looks stuck somehow, like there’s something he doesn’t want to say.

Suddenly, it occurs to Grace that she could call and ask her father if he has any idea why Kevin might be in New York, whether he might know anyone here. She opens her mouth to say so. 

Then the penny drops.

“Oh,” she says. “You think my father hired Kevin to hurt me.”

The words tumble out and sit there in the open. Harold stares at her, wide-eyed, and Grace stares back.

Her father is mostly sober these days, but he relapses for short periods on a regular basis. At his age, it’s not doing much for his lifespan, but that’s his business, as far as Grace is concerned. 

The real problem is that, when he’s drinking, he stops pretending like he doesn’t have a mean streak a mile wide. There’s not a lot her dad won’t do when he’s drunk, if he thinks he can get away with it. If he thinks it’ll get him something he wants.

“Grace, I’m so sorry,” says Harold softly.

She blinks. Harold’s expression is almost unbearably kind. 

“I suppose I should have told you,” he says. “But I was hoping to rule your father out as a suspect before it was necessary to say anything. Since that’s no longer possible, however—were you aware that you are named in a life insurance policy, of which your father is the beneficiary?”

“I don’t have…” she tries to say, but then she remembers. 

Her mother had asked; it was over a year ago. The idea was that her parents would pay the majority of the premium. The policy was supposed to cover the cost of a funeral. _New York is so dangerous,_ had been the logic. Grace had answered a few questions over the phone for a lady who’d called from her parents’ bank, and that was all. She’d forgotten it completely. At the time it wasn’t important.

“I glanced at your mother’s phone records. She seems to think your father is golfing for the weekend in Myrtle Beach.” Harold sounds like he’s trying to be businesslike, but he keeps sneaking looks at her. “When his financial difficulties began, he didn’t mention anything to her. Now he’s on the verge of losing the house, but she remains unaware.”

Harold hesitates, like he’s trying to prolong the last moments before revelation. “That was him, wasn’t it? The picture in your sketchbook I wasn’t supposed to see.”

Grace has to drag her thoughts back from the far-off country they were wandering to even remember what he’s talking about: her sketchbook, the charcoal study. 

“Yes,” she says. “How did you guess?”

“To look at the picture is to see the subject through your eyes.” He gestures, then lets his hand drop. “You were afraid of him.”

The room around her goes hot and blurry. Grace blinks rapidly.

“Oh no, please,” says Harold frantically. “Forget I said that, I had no right.”

Grace claps a hand tight over her mouth and turns her face away. Harold’s hand envelopes her shoulder for just a moment. It’s big and warm and gentle, and a shudder runs through her whole body. 

“I think perhaps this would be a good moment to order some lunch.” He stands up and begins to putter around the table. “I also think you were right and that we shouldn’t tempt fate by ordering delivery. There’s a gourmet market just across the park. I’ll grab a few items for a tabletop picnic and return directly.”

Grace watches him cross the room. The place on her shoulder where his hand had rested feels cold now, like she snagged a hole in her sleeve. 

When Harold reaches the door, he looks back at her.

“Call or text if you think of anything in particular you’d like to eat,” he says. “I’m locking the door behind me. Please don’t open it. I’ll let myself back in.”

When he’s gone, she lets herself sink into the armchair closest to the window. She shuts her eyes and leans into the padded arm. She’s had such a long day, and it’s still only the middle of the afternoon. Would it be terrible if she shut her eyes for a moment—as if nothing had happened, and her life were still what she thought it was when she woke up this morning?

Grace closes her eyes. She rests her head against the back of the chair. Eventually, her breathing starts to become slow and even.

When she opens her eyes again, it’s to the sound of a heavy thud in the foyer—a noise like someone trying to break down the door.


	8. Hunger Is the Only Story

**Dunderbaak’s Grocery  
March 30, 2012  
5:05 p.m.**

Harold squints at picnic hampers in the tasteful ambient lighting of the grocery store, and reassures himself for the dozenth time that the case is going more or less as foreseen, and that Grace is all right. Relatively speaking. The revelation about her father had naturally been disturbing, but she is safe in Harold’s house, behind multiple layers of protections. Nothing can reach her there. 

For the first time in over 24 hours, he feels like he can breathe.

He peers at the elegant, hand-lettered placards listing the items included with each hamper. This is why he normally hires out his shopping: he simply isn’t very good at it. 

Foie gras in this one—perhaps not. Salmon, that’s safer. She doesn’t seem to be a vegetarian. Oils and herbs and flatbreads, good, compote, figs, strawberries, better. The one with the best cheese selection also includes wine, but wine with lunch might seem too reminiscent of a date. Perhaps he can substitute some fine chocolates. 

He’s waiting for the shop assistant to finish wrapping tiny cheeses and cured meats when John activates his comm. “Finch,” he says, “are you with Grace?”

“Not at this exact moment. Why?” 

“I think we got it wrong.” John is outdoors, Harold can hear the sounds of traffic around him. “I don’t think Kevin Wiley is the threat.”

A chill travels down Harold’s back. “Why do you say that?” 

“Kevin was easy to find, so I cloned his phone and tailed him right to Paul Hendricks’ hotel. You were right about Hendricks paying Wiley, but killing Grace wasn’t the plan.”

“Then what _was_ the plan?” Groceries under one arm, Harold starts back to the house at the fastest clip he can manage.

“They were going to stage a mugging. The idea was, Hendricks takes Grace to dinner, then Wiley puts on a ski mask and jumps out at her on the way home. He frightens her, maybe roughs her up a little.”

Harold stops in his tracks. “For what possible reason?” he demands. A woman with a stroller, passing nearby, gives him an alarmed glance and walks faster.

“Apparently, Paul Hendricks wants Grace to move back to South Carolina.” John’s voice takes on the merry lilt Harold has come to associate with imminent violence. “Figured he’d have a better chance of convincing her if he gave her a scare, showed her the city wasn’t safe.”

“ _Did_ he.” Harold grits his teeth. A passing bus honks for clearance, and he’s forced to cool his heels on the curb for a moment longer. “He doesn’t know his own daughter very well, it would seem.” 

“Are you outside?” John demands.

“I acquired food, it seemed safer than ordering in. I’m in sight of the front door now.” Harold lets himself in through the gate and hobbles up the front steps; he’s putting unhelpful amounts of strain on his injured joints in the interests of getting back quickly. 

“I’m headed your way,” says John. “Don’t leave the house again before I get there.”

“No fear of that,” Harold mutters. Once he gets to his laptop, he’s not stirring again until he has the right people in his grasp, complete with certified testaments of guilt.

The front door is intact, with no sign of tampering or forced entry near the lock. Decorative pillars on the front porch hide multiple security cameras. Harold would have received a text if anyone had remained in their range for longer than 5 seconds. 

He accesses a keypad hidden in a patch of recessed brick to input the security code, then turns his key in the lock. As he opens the door, someone shoves him, hard. 

Harold falls through the doorway and lands with a crash against the table in the foyer. His knees hit the tiled floor. There’s a bright, hot pulse of pain in his bad hip that steals his breath momentarily. 

From far away, he hears John calling his name. 

Harold looks up. A tall, broad shouldered young man in a dark knitted cap closes the front door behind him. He frowns down at Harold, then looks around, like even he isn’t certain what he’s doing here.

Harold tries to gather his wits. The door shielding Grace, to the left, is still secure. All is not yet lost.

“If it’s money you want,” he says, “I can get it for you.”

Slowly, the enormous young man shakes his head.

“What then?” says Harold.

“Your girlfriend.” He holds out his hand. “This high, little. Red hair. Where’s she at?”

Harold’s heart pounds in his ears. 

“She in there?” The young man gestures to the left with a knife that he flicks open before Harold’s eyes. “Tell her to come out.” 

Suddenly John’s voice is in his ear again. “Play for time,” he says, like he can sense Harold’s terror. “I’m on my way.”

Harold heaves his desperation to one side. He gets to his feet and straightens his glasses for a better look.

His assailant’s face is grim and determined. He is also, now that Harold can see clearly, shockingly youthful. Merely a massive sort of boy, really, perhaps not even of age. 

Thinking rapidly, Harold speaks in calm, measured tones.

“You won’t be able to break in,” he tells the boy. “That door is made of engineered wood, with a reinforced latch. The steel plates and stud-penetrating screws make it kick-proof. You’d need a police issue battering ram to even make a dent.”

“Fuck that.” The boy doesn’t look as discouraged as Harold hoped. His voice shakes, but the hand holding the knife is steady. “Look, I got a message to deliver. I don’t want to hurt an old man, just open the door.”

John does not, as Harold half hoped, tell him how to respond. He wonders if Grace can hear them. In what now seems to him an absurd and unaccountable oversight, the apartment is not soundproofed. What will she do, if she hears? Will she think to call John?

“May I ask who sent you here?”

The boy’s face darkens. 

“Forgive me, but I just don’t see this being your idea. You don’t look to me like the sort of person who would assault someone and break into their home, just to hurt a woman.”

“Man, shut up—”

“But you might be in some kind of trouble. Or maybe you just need money urgently. I would very much like to know the name of the person who sent you here. I’m willing to compensate you generously for that information. I have a few thousand in cash on me now, and I can get you more when I’m next at my computer.” Harold reaches into his jacket’s inner pocket and retrieves a money clip. “It’s yours. Consider it a pledge of good faith.”

The boy’s eyes widen as Harold holds out the money clip. For a moment, he looks almost vulnerable. His eyes dart from Harold to the door and for a long, breathless moment they both stand there, locked in place, trembling. 

When the boy’s expression grows grim and determined Harold sees it, but not in time.

He hits the wall hard with the boy’s hands gripping his lapels. All the breath leaves Harold’s body in a stunned whoosh. The boy is immensely tall and strong, and in his grip Harold’s eyes squeeze shut. When the boy shakes him, he feels his bones rattle.

“Open the door!” the boy screams in his face.

“Harold?” John says, frantic.

“I won’t,” Harold gasps. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

Suddenly, to his left, the door bursts open. His heart lifts, and immediately sinks again. “No!” he cries out. “No, go back!”

“What in the world—” says Grace. “What is going on? Let him go! I said _let_ him—Nico?”

The boy jumps like he’s been electrocuted.

“Nicolas Rodelas.” Grace slowly steps forward, and Harold tenses. “It’s you, isn’t it? What on earth are you doing here?”

“Grace, be careful, he has a knife,” he manages to gasp.

It’s quiet. When Grace speaks again, she sounds like a kindly yet strict schoolteacher. “You better not have a knife out where _I_ can see it.”

Harold blinks, and risks a glance. The boy is staring over his shoulder like a deer in the headlights. 

“Okay.” There are slow footsteps, then Grace finally steps into Harold’s sight line. Her hands are at her sides, and she looks calm, cautious. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You need to let Harold go. You got lucky, Harold’s not the type to hold a grudge. Right, Harold?”

“Right,” Harold croaks.

“But,” she adds, “you keep messing around and hurt someone, we won’t be able to fix this as easily. So put the knife away and come sit down. We obviously have a lot to talk about.”

The boy is breathing fast. Harold thinks, _my God, he’s crying_. Grace’s expression of fearless concern doesn’t falter. 

Slowly, the fingers grasping Harold’s jacket unclench. 

Harold pulls away and slumps against the wall, gasping. Nico back away until he bumps into the decorative table in the middle of the foyer. The giant vase full of silk flowers wobbles.

So does Nico’s mouth.

And then all Harold can see is Grace. “Are you okay?” she says. Her small hands grip Harold’s shoulders. From this close, Harold can smell her perfume, the same sweet rose fragrance that clung to John’s shirt yesterday.

“I’m uninjured,” he assures her, not quite truthfully. “Grace, please, are you sure this is wise?”

Grace turns to Nico, hunched and miserable. She walks right up to him, as if compassion will make her proof against a knife’s blade. 

“Nico’s not going to hurt me,” she says. “Right?”

Nico scrubs his face with his sleeve. “She didn’t say it was you. I swear I didn’t know.”

“Hmm.” Grace puts her hand on his back. “Who’s this ‘she’?”

Harold watches Grace and the hulking boy disappear into the apartment. He remains leaning against the wall, not at all certain that his legs will support him if he tries to follow. 

He’d believed that he was about to die. That Grace would also die, and there would be nothing to stop John from coming home and finding their bodies. 

He lifts a shaking hand to tap his earpiece. “John,” he says hoarsely. 

“Harold, thank God.” John’s voice is sharp with relief. “What the hell happened?” 

He straightens his tie and his jacket. Lying overturned near the door is the hamper full of food. Incredible, now, to think that he’d opened the door of his own safehouse to Grace’s pursuer because he’d thought it important to acquire baguettes and fig compote and triple creme brie.

“Grace has my attacker well in hand.” Harold finds a jar of brandied apricots that rolled behind a chair leg. “It appears they know each other. I believe the immediate crisis has been averted.”

“Are both of you okay?”

Harold holds onto the door frame, and looks into the apartment. Nico is seated at the table; Grace is giving him a water bottle. “Remarkably, yes.” 

John is quiet for a moment. “Someone should put Paul Hendricks on a plane back to Columbia. But I can be there in 5 minutes if you need me.”

“Take care of Mr. Hendricks first. By the time you get back, I should know who the threat is for certain.”

Harold doesn’t hang up, and neither does John. Taking a breath to settle himself, he picks up the overturned food basket, steps inside the apartment, and shuts the door behind him.

“Mr. Rodelas, I have just one question.” He limps to the table, feeling new twinges with every movement, and sits down in front of his laptop. “The person who hired you: was her name Sarah Hibbert?”

Grace whips around to look at Harold, wide-eyed. 

“She didn’t _hire_ me,” says Nico indignantly. Now that the situation has normalized he looks like nothing more frightening than a youth submitting with ill grace to the instructions of his elders. “She was going to take away my foster sisters and split ‘em up if I didn’t do what she said.”

“So you waited outside Grace’s apartment, then followed us here. What were you supposed to do when you found Grace?”

“Ms. Hibbert gave me something needs to get signed.”

Harold pinches the bridge of his nose for just a second. “Were you supposed to report back to Ms. Hibbert? To return the paper?”

“Yeah. Tonight, I’m supposed to go meet her.”

“Meet her where?” Nico looks mulish. “Answer the question and give me that paper, and you’re free to go. No one will take your foster sisters away.”

“It’s okay,” Grace assures him. “Did she want you to come to her apartment or is she coming to meet you?”

He squirms and shrugs. “I’m supposed to call her when I get the paper.”

“All right. That’s fine. Paper please.” Grace holds out her hand. “Oh—and I’ll take that knife too, mister.”

*

The sun is setting by the time Grace puts Nico in a cab with half the contents of the lunch hamper, and all the contents of Harold’s money clip. It isn’t the way in which knife-wielding assailants are usually neutralized in their line of work, but Grace’s methods have their appeal.

Harold stands on the porch, unable to stifle the urge to hover uselessly from a distance. Grace returns, looking drained. She stops and leans against a column with her arms crossed. They don’t say anything for a moment.

“Nico was 14 when I met him,” she says. “He’d already spent a year in detention because he got mixed up with some older kids who were up to no good. I watched him pull his grades up, make friends, get into comic books. Then his grandmother got out of the hospital and when he went to live with her, he convinced her to take in some other kids. Said he was lonely. DCS put on this big family picnic last year and they all came out, him and his grandma and the two little girls. Nico was so good with them. It was like one of those videos on the internet where some big sweet dog is looking after a pair of tiny kittens.”

Harold acknowledges this with a nod. “I suppose that’s why he was chosen. With arrests in his background and a family to protect, he could be manipulated and disposed of. I suppose Sarah Hibbert underestimated his personal loyalty to you.”

“She probably didn’t even realize we knew each other. What are you going to do about her, anyway?”

“John is going to her apartment to pay her a visit, armed with certain documents. He’ll urge her to turn herself in. If she doesn’t, the same information will be turned over to our contacts on the police force, and she will probably be arrested.”

“I was wondering what the police thought about all this.” 

“They can be very helpful, albeit in a strictly unofficial capacity.” Harold studies her, trying not to be obvious about doing so. “You seem a little pale, if I may say so.”

Grace gives him a rueful looking smile. “I should probably eat soon.”

“I believe we can safely order something, now.” 

“Suits me fine.” She looks thoughtful. “Is it over? Am I out of danger?”

“I—believe so, yes.”

“Nico wasn’t what I’d call a deadly threat.”

Harold shrugs very slightly. “If we hadn’t been prepared, that meeting might have happened very differently. That’s the purpose of what we do. Premeditated crimes can be prevented. Sometimes, it only takes the right person saying the right thing at the right moment.”

Grace nods slowly. She looks out towards the street and the park beyond it. Her expression seems sad, or perhaps a bit wistful.

“I must apologize for my carelessness,” he says. “A good outcome is poor justification for exposing you to unnecessary risk.”

She gives him a small frown. “Sarah Hibbert’s the only person who owes me an apology. Unless you’re apologizing for getting attacked. Please don’t be apologizing for that, that’s silly.”

Harold takes a half step closer. He can feel the warmth of her, see her throat bob when she swallows. Her eyes light on his mouth. 

For a split-second his vision goes completely white, and when the static clears, he finds that he’s holding her face gently between his hands. 

“Thanks for the rescue,” he whispers. 

Grace smiles like she’s about to laugh, and Harold leans down to kiss her. Her mouth is cool and slightly bitter from the coffee she drank hours ago. The warm weight of her, leaning into him, makes Harold’s mind shudder and go blank. All he can do is breathe quietly, and touch the tips of his fingers to her soft hair. 

_Oh, my dear,_ he thinks. 

Losing her is going to hurt far, far worse than he’d imagined.

*

**18 Washington Square Place  
** March 30, 2012  
8:54 p.m. 

When John returns to the safehouse that evening, Grace is curled up and dozing in the window seat while Harold busies himself at his laptop. Only a few lights are burning, to create a more restful environment. Harold is having difficulty seeing anything beyond the glow of his laptop screen. 

When John says his name, Harold jumps, then rises from his chair as John crosses the room. He looks Harold over critically, and Harold almost wants to reassure him: yes, I’m fine, it only hurts in the places no one can see.

“You’re all right?” says John.

“I’m fine.”

The lines in John’s forehead don’t go away. “I can pretend to believe you,” he says after a moment. 

Harold manages a brief smile. “I take it your conversation with Ms. Hibbert was productive. Detective Fusco was good enough to let me know that she turned herself in.”

“There was enough evidence in those files to get a warrant for Frank Fisher too. That’s why I’m late.”

Harold turns to the computer. He closes a few windows, opens others at random. While his back is to John, he steals a glance at Grace, almost invisible in the shadows. “And Paul Hendricks?” he says quietly.

“Taken care of.” 

He looks over his shoulder and arches an eyebrow. 

John shrugs. “I put him on a plane. I explained that Grace has friends here in the city, and they’re going to make sure nothing happens to her. He got the message. I told him I’d give Grace his regrets.”

“I see,” Harold nods. “Very well. Excellent work. Not that I expected anything else.”

“You haven’t told Grace what her father was planning, have you?”

John’s tone isn’t the least bit accusatory, but the question nonetheless stings Harold’s conscience. 

“No, I have not,” he admits. “I was waiting for the right moment, which never quite seemed to arrive. She hadn’t eaten, and then she was tired…”

He’s making excuses now. Harold sighs, rubbing his forehead. “You’ll have to forgive me, John, I’m not at my best.”

John’s brow furrows. “You were attacked in your own safehouse,” he says. “That’ll rattle anybody.”

“Perhaps.” 

John’s silence becomes more thoughtful. “You _left_ the safe house. That’s not like you.”

 _Isn’t it?_ Harold wonders. Recklessness is the form that hubris assumes with him. He’s been this way since he was a boy—it’s just that no one still living has known him long enough to spot his patterns. 

“My judgment has been dangerously compromised throughout this case,” he says, clipped. “I should have left it to you and stayed in the library. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

John’s expression is warmer than Harold deserves. “You were thinking that someone you cared about was in danger. It’s hard to be rational when that happens.”

“I thought I knew everything about her.” Harold feels distant. As if it’s already days later, and he’s seeing this conversation in retrospect. “But since she came back into my life she has surprised me over and over...you know, I’m not certain she ever truly needed us.”

“I noticed that too.” John leans a hand against the back of a kitchen chair. “Her father wasn’t really trying to kill her, and she handled the kid on her own. Are we missing something?”

Harold had been quick to reassure Grace that all danger was past, but he thinks it over. “My instinct is to be cautious and keep watch over her until we receive another number. But I’m not really capable of a disinterested opinion.”

“Grace won two coin tosses in two days. Easy enough for either one to go the other way.” John’s brow furrows in thought. “Unless you think the Machine is just being overprotective?”

Harold blinks hard. The Machine’s mysterious but self-evident inner life isn’t something he enjoys speculating about. “You’re saying that in your professional opinion, the threat to Grace’s life has been eliminated?”

John huffs a laugh. “Sure. My professional opinion is, it’s safe for her to go home and get some rest.”

Harold takes a single deep breath in, then out. Then he shrugs minutely, and begins packing up his laptop. 

John watches him, patient and quiet. Harold’s throat is tight, his eyes hot. There’s something familiar about this grief. He wakes up feeling this way sometimes after he’s had a dream about Nathan.

Harold walks past John to the coat closet, removing his coat and hat from their hooks. “If you would be good enough to escort Grace home when she wakes up, I’ll call you when we have another number.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” says John.

“To the library, Mr. Reese. There’s a great deal of work yet to be done tying up the loose ends of this case.”

“You’re not even gonna say goodbye to Grace?” John is incredulous.

Harold holds the door open for a moment, already feeling the icy draft from the street. “I can’t stay, John,” he says, strangled. “I have to go, and I don’t _want_ to, don’t you see?”

He leaves without waiting for an answer.


	9. The Question

**18 Washington Square Place  
March 31, 2012  
1:03 a.m.**

“Do you have to take me straight home or can we get coffee first?” Grace asks around a yawn. 

John studies her for a moment. The imprint of the pillow is visible on the side of her face, red lines like faint scars. “I figured you’d be ready to get back, start putting today behind you,” he says.

“Not exactly.” She combs her fingers through her hair, frowning when they snag on a knot. “If I’m honest, I’d rather not face my apartment just yet.”

He hasn’t known Grace for very long, but he knows the signs and symptoms of loneliness when he sees them. She’d slept curled up in her window seat like a cat until after midnight. He’d stretched out on the couch in the living room to wait for her, instead of waking her up and hurrying towards another goodbye. 

“There’s a place,” John says. “Harold took me there when we first met. They make excellent eggs benedict.”

“Do they have pancakes?”

John pretends to be insulted she’d even ask. “Banana chocolate chip.”

“That sounds perfect. Take me to your breakfast food.”

He takes her to the Lyric. The waitress, Heidi, smiles at John when she sees him. He’s a regular these days, and an even bigger tipper than Harold. The other two employees on graveyard shift also stop by the booth to say hello while Heidi gets their coffee.

“Oh I see,” says Grace. “You brought me to meet your fanclub.”

John just smiles, because—maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to look good in front of Grace. As long as the food’s up to snuff, right?

It’s almost two a.m. John’s more tired than he thought he’d be after a case like this. He didn’t even get into a single fight, although confronting Sarah Hibbert with the evidence of her crimes had felt kind of like one. She’d screamed at him, tried to hit him, demanded to know who he was, who he worked for. Her husband came into the room and told John to leave, so John handed him the hard copy evidence file, which contained photographs of Hibbert and Fisher together. Sensing that the curtain was about to come ringing down, Hibbert succumbed to incoherent rage, breaking her own possessions and throwing things around the room. John had given Lionel’s card to the husband, told him that Hibbert had an hour to turn herself in, and walked out.

Compared to all that, flashing his gun at Paul Hendricks and telling him to board a plane had been downright restful.

But John doesn’t mind being tired. He’s glad Grace suggested this, although there’s a crease in her forehead that says she’s thinking about something. John tries not to feel nervous about whatever she’s building up to. 

“So,” she says, “you weren’t lying when you said your job is helping people.”

“You thought I was lying?”

“Not exactly. I just couldn’t picture it.” She holds her chin in her hands. “Watching Harold do his thing for awhile brought it into focus. Up close, it doesn’t look nearly as strange as it sounds. Mostly it looks like a guy pecking away at a laptop.”

John smiles. “What about the part where a teenager with a knife shoved Harold into the wall?”

“See, that’s just a Tuesday morning when you work with kids.”

“Maybe you should look into a less dangerous line of work.”

“Why,” she says, a dangerous gleam in her eyes, “you guys hiring?”

Heidi appears with their drinks. Grace reaches for a little silver jug, and John watches as plumes of cream marble her iced coffee.

“Did Harold go home?” Grace asks. 

“He said he had work to do,” John says. 

“Hmm.” Grace arches an eyebrow. “Didn’t think he was the type to kiss someone then run out while they were sleeping.”

John doesn’t choke on his coffee, but only because his poker face has years of training behind it. Slowly, he puts his cup down. 

“And here I thought you guys listened in on each other with your ear doodads.” Grace looks amused.

“It doesn’t pick up everything.” He doesn’t know whether or not he’s grateful for that, right now.

Her eyes narrow. John sits there, and she studies him. 

“I’m going to ask you a question; you don’t have to answer it.” John waits. “Are you and Harold...?”

He doesn’t understand at first. Then he does, and he’s speechless.

“Sorry,” says Grace, leaning back. “Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You’re not.” He laughs, shakes his head. “Just wondering why you’d ask me something like that when you’re the one he kissed.”

“People are complicated. And you guys…” She trails off. Shrugs, like whatever she means to imply by that might as well be written on a billboard in Times Square, it’s so obvious. 

John thinks about it after Heidi returns to take their order. (John asks for hashbrowns.) They’re sitting quietly. Grace weaves slightly on her side of the booth, obviously in the late stages of exhaustion. John imagines getting up, sliding in next to her. He pictures her leaning against him, imagines himself throwing an arm around her to keep her warm. 

_What if Harold were here,_ whispers a voice at the back of his head. _What would you do then?_

When Heidi returns to set heaping plates of food in front of them John jumps like he heard the first notes of reveille.

Grace takes a huge bite, and crinkles her eyes appreciatively.

“I feel like we sneaked out of our houses to see each other on a school night,” she says. “Forbidden pancakes from Waffle House in the wee hours of the morning.”

John smiles. “I didn’t figure you for the kind of teenager that sneaked around.”

“Why not?”

He looks up, surprised. “I don’t know.” Now that he actually thinks about it, he doesn’t have a good reason. Grace is quiet, but she isn’t exactly meek. Plus, Harold is quiet, and he’s the sneakiest person John knows. 

“You met my dad, right?” she says, arching an eyebrow.

“I, uh, wasn’t sure Harold got a chance to talk to you about that.”

“You left to find out what Kevin was up to, I put the pieces together on my own. Let’s just say I’ve always been happier when there was some distance between me and him.”

He won’t get a better cue than that. Briefly as possible, John tells her about Wiley and her dad’s plan to stage a mugging. Grace listens, wide-eyed, laughing helplessly at the absurdity of it all.

“Did you turn them in too?” Grace looks like she’s not sure what she hopes the answer will be.

“No need. It turned out your father had to leave the city, suddenly.”

“Suddenly?”

“I introduced myself. A few minutes later he was boarding a plane.”

“What in the world did you say to get him to go along with that?”

“I didn’t say much of anything.”

Grace looks at him, her face growing softer, her eyes darker. John grabs his coffee hastily and takes a long drink.

“How are the hashbrowns?” says Grace.

“They’re ok. Probably not as good as Waffle House.” He says it just to make her laugh, and it works.

She waits until there’s only crumbs left on both their plates before asking John the question he’s been expecting since they first sat down. 

“Why didn’t Harold just tell me himself what my dad was really up to? We spent all that time just hanging around, waiting for you to get back.”

“You’d have to ask him.” John has a few ideas, but it’s Harold’s business.

“Will I get the chance?” She sounds uncharacteristically uncertain. “I mean, he just left. I hope you weren’t planning to disappear like that.”

Never, he wants to say. He wants to believe there’s a way this works out where he gets to drink tea in Grace’s kitchen again, talk more about what it means to live for a purpose.

“I’m not safe to be around,” he says, as bluntly as he knows how. “Neither of us is, really. That’s probably why Harold left. Once a case is over…”

“You don’t stay in touch.”

“There have been exceptions. But no, we usually don’t.”

“So make an exception for me.”

A thrill goes through John, followed by a swift zap of anxiety. “I want to,” he says.

Grace tilts her head like she can hear the argument he’s having with himself. “You don’t think Harold would like it?”

John shakes his head. Harold would freak out, but he’d get over it. And John’s not sure that the usual excuses about safety apply in Grace’s situation. She’s so alone. Even John isn’t as alone as Grace is, and that’s not just worrying, it’s _wrong_.

He’s gotten close to numbers before. He still keeps an eye on Darren from a distance, and Sofia emailed him just last week. He reads Maxine’s articles. Zoe calls from time to time. There are doors John keeps shut, because relationships are for the living, not—whatever he is. And yet, talking to Grace these last couple of days, he’s been feeling those doors rattle on their hinges, like they want to swing open.

“Your safety is a concern,” John says carefully. “But it isn’t just that. I need to talk to Harold before I make any promises.”

“John, I’m not asking you for promises.” Grace sounds dismayed. “Did you think I was?”

He shakes his head. The fact that promises are crowding on the tip of his tongue is John’s problem to figure out. 

“We’re friends.” She reaches across the table and squeezes his wrist. “Whatever else happens. Even...even if I don’t see you again. My friendship is always going to be yours.”

John covers her hand, watches it disappear beneath his. “You’ll see me at least one more time,” he says. He can promise that much, at least.

*

**3:03 a.m.**

The drive to Grace’s building from the diner is a short one. Even in the city there’s not a lot of traffic at 3 a.m. Grace dozes the whole way, head pressed against the passenger side window. John switches the radio to NPR and turns the volume down low, staring out at streetlights and stoplights, thinking.

People have mistaken John and Harold for a couple before. John never discourages those rumors. If bad guys hesitate to mess with Finch because they’re afraid of what his boyfriend in the suit will do when he finds out, so much the better. They’ve never slept together, but to John that’s almost incidental. Harold has had to throw out entire suits because of how much John’s bled on them. _Til death do us part_ was written into their partnership from day one.

All the same, before they started working this case, John never gave a lot of thought to Harold and...intimacy. This is the guy who got nervous when John figured out his favorite tea; he kind of assumed that Harold would consider sex too invasive or revealing to be comfortable. Plus, he’s definitely the romantic type, and romance is probably hard when you're juggling multiple identities. 

But if Harold’s kissing people now...

The thing about that little fantasy of John’s, back in the diner: if he were holding Grace, like he’d pictured, and Harold kissed her while she was in John’s arms, it would be the most natural thing in the world for Harold to kiss John next.

If that’s something Harold wants.

If John wants it too.

*

**HQ  
** March 31, 2012  
3:34 a.m. 

When John gets back to the library it feels empty, almost. Silence has settled over the second floor like a heavy snowfall. It almost makes him decide to come back in the morning, but he knows Harold—there’s no way he’s cozy in bed somewhere after everything that went down today. He’ll be channeling his anxiety into dismantling corrupt bureaucracies and rewarding the innocent with trust funds. He’ll be working.

John climbs the wide, curving staircase and muffles his steps as he comes down the aisle between shelves. Not that it matters; in the distance he can hear the clatter of Harold’s keyboard, the faint creaking of his chair.

He also hears the low, excited _whumph_ Bear makes when he catches John’s scent. There goes the stealth approach.

“Good boy,” he says, when Bear comes tearing towards him out of the darkness. He thumps Bear’s side and scratches his head, and they set out to find Harold together.

The desk where Harold works is lit by just the one green shaded lamp. Harold is in his shirtsleeves, cuffs rolled up at the wrists, tie carefully draped over a nearby chair back. Bear immediately retreats to his bed, positioned where he can keep an eye on the entrances and on Harold.

Harold is holding his glasses in one hand and his forehead in the other. He looks up when John steps into his line of sight.

“Hello.” His smile is small and tender. A little relieved, maybe. “Or good morning, perhaps I should say.”

“I figured you’d still be here.” John nods at the monitors. “Did we get a new number already?”

Harold shakes his head. “Just tidying up the loose ends in Grace’s casefile. Grace asked me to see if there was anything I could do for Mr. Rodelas’ grandmother. I’m also making arrangements to relieve some of the financial pressure on the Hendricks family. The mortgages, principally.”

Paul Hendricks deserves prison, not debt relief in John’s opinion, but he’s glad anyway. If Grace doesn’t have to worry about her family, she’ll have an easier time putting them from her mind. 

“Grace got home safe,” John tells him. 

“Yes, I heard.”

“You were listening?” John drifts a few steps closer to the desk. “She and I had an interesting conversation back at the diner.”

Harold doesn’t even nod this time, just flicks his eyes upwards. 

“Grace was pretty confused why you ran out without saying goodbye. I guess she doesn’t know you that well yet. I figured it out as soon as she told me you kissed her.”

Harold stops typing. From the way his shoulders draw up, John can tell that he’s annoyed. 

“After all,” John says. “You’ve been a man with nothing to lose for a long time now. That’s a hell of an advantage to give up.”

“I didn’t—” Exactly as John predicted, Harold hisses out a long breath and glares.

“I had _no choice_ but to leave,” he says with emphasis. “Not because I am striving for tactical superiority, but because Grace is leading a normal life, and I won’t endanger that to gratify my own selfish wishes. I would expect you, of all people, to understand this.”

That last part stings enough that John doesn’t feel bad about what he says next. “That sounds nice. But it’s yourself you’re protecting, not Grace.”

Harold’s expression is wooden. “I did not hire you for your skills as a relationship counselor.”

“No. You hired me to protect people. I happen to think I’m pretty good at it. I want to keep getting to know Grace.” Harold draws a sharp, sudden breath. “I think I can look after her. Actually, I’m going to keep looking after her regardless. I’d just like to be able to talk to her while I’m doing it.”

Harold glances at the screen with a faint wince. John doesn’t have to look over Harold’s shoulder to know that he’s been making long term arrangements for Grace’s security, as well as her family’s. 

“Is that wrong of me, Harold?” John tilts his head. “Am I just being selfish?”

“No,” says Harold, hoarsely. “Or yes, perhaps, but you _should_ be selfish. You should have relationships, and people who love you. I sometimes feel as if I’ve walled myself up alive in this place, and you with me. And I don’t—I never—” He takes a shaky breath. “You of all people deserve better.”

John walks around Harold’s desk, behind his chair. Harold doesn’t turn around. 

“If you were listening to what Grace told me,” he says, “then you heard her ask about us.” 

“I did.” 

John can smell Harold’s cologne again, faint after a day of hard work and long hours. “I got the impression that she thinks we’re being obvious.” 

Harold lets out a small huff. “That’s impossible,” he says. “Grace is alarmingly perceptive, to be sure, but I’ve been extremely discreet—”

John grabs the back of Harold’s chair and spins him around without warning. Harold makes a startled squawking noise as John drops to one knee, so their faces are level.

For a second they just look at each other. Harold breathes heavily. He looks dismayed, then stubborn, as if he’s preparing for a fight.

“I’d like to ask you a question, Harold,” says John.

Harold blinks at him with wide eyes rimmed red. “Alright,” he says, voice faint.

Before John can second-guess himself, he leans in and kisses him. 

He doesn’t linger, or give Harold a chance to do much more than gasp his surprise against John’s mouth. John just makes sure the message gets across in a way that even Harold can’t pretend not to understand, before gently detaching himself.

Harold is breathing unsteadily. His face is pale, except for two brilliant patches of color high on his cheekbones. 

“Well?” says John. He fights not to smile, but a deep well of affection and relief is bubbling up inside him.

“I—I’m still not certain I grasp the nature of your query.” 

Harold’s looks baffled, disbelieving. But also hopeful. It’s possible, John realizes, that Harold hasn’t put any more thought into this than John did before Grace prompted him.

He kisses Harold again. This time, John makes sure Harold sees it coming. But Harold doesn’t pull away, and when John wraps his hands around the back of Harold’s neck, he doesn’t let go until Harold starts making shocked, whimpering noises into his mouth. 

The warmth and solidity of him warms John like a bonfire. He feels as if he’s glowing from the inside out.

“How about now?” John murmurs, after a few seconds. “Am I making myself any clearer?”

“ _John_.” Harold’s hands find his shoulders. He shakes his head, then gives an exasperated chuckle. “I don’t know what to say,” he admits.

“That’s okay,” John murmurs. “Long as you don’t run out on me. It’s rude. And it makes us kissing again more complicated than it needs to be.”

Harold clutches him tighter. “You’re impossible. And you don’t know my mind as well as you think.”

“Is that right?”

“You haven’t entirely ambushed me with this. I was aware that my feelings for you were—that I had feelings for you.” 

“You could have let me in on the secret.”

Harold pushes his chair back slightly. John lets him go, but stays kneeling so Harold has to look at him.

“I compromised a safehouse because I allowed my desire to impress Grace to override my common sense. I knowingly send you into danger on a regular basis.” Harold takes a deep breath. His chin wobbles. “To say nothing of the fact that I got Nathan killed. It often seems to me that I hardly deserve friends, much less more intimate connections, when this is the use I make of them.” 

John chest clenches in sympathy, but they’re in luck. Guilt happens to be his area of expertise.

“You know,” he says quietly, “when I started this job, I thought it was going to be my penance.”

Harold’s brow wrinkles.

“Before that of course, the plan was just to disappear. Make it like I never even existed. But then you found me.” John holds Harold’s gaze. “Other people looked at me, they saw a weapon, something they could use. But you—”

“I saw a good man,” Harold says fiercely. 

John puts a hand on his knee. “And that’s why I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing this, with you. This is who I was always supposed to be. This isn’t penance. It’s my happy ending.”

Harold stares at him, mouth in a tight line, eyes hot.

“I know it’s different for you. And I don’t know what Grace’s happy ending is. All I know is that we definitely won’t be a part of it if you run away now.”

Harold purses his lips. Normally it makes him look prim and fussy, but now it just looks like he’s trying to keep his mouth from quivering. 

“It’s different,” he says, pleadingly. “You know it’s different.”

“I know she’s not an ex-spy, Harold, but she’s not exactly helpless. Eight hours ago, she saved your ass.”

Harold’s expression is stunned, then wondering, then mournful. His shoulders slump, and he looks at John, wide-eyed and wistful.

“Can we table this subject for the rest of tonight?” he says. “Couldn’t we just…” He looks wistfully at John’s face. 

Or, not his face. His mouth.

John takes his time rolling onto his feet, conscious of Harold’s eyes moving up the length of him. He takes his time. Harold’s gaze burns everywhere it touches.

“Anything,” he says, pulling Harold to his feet. “Whatever you want.”

*

**8:34 a.m.**

John opens his eyes to find that the day is overcast, made for lying in bed in a chilly room next to someone warm. Rain patters gently against the frosted windows. Harold is snoring gently next to John’s ear.

He wants to stretch, shake the circulation back into his numb left hand. He doesn’t move. At the foot of the bed, Bear heaves a loud sigh, as if to tell John he’s been awake for a while and wants his breakfast. 

John’s gonna remodel this corner of the library. Put up walls, make a real bedroom, connect it to the bathroom. With his back problems, Harold needs something sturdier than an air mattress to sleep on. So does John actually, but he’ll do something about it for Harold.

“Good morning,” mumbles Harold.

John rolls over. The blanket covers all of Harold except for his head and the tops of his shoulders. He’d surprised John last night by getting under the blankets in his white undershirt and boxers. If he’d ever thought about it, John would have assumed either that Harold kept a pair of silk pajamas here, or else that he slept in his suit. 

Last night they’d been too tired to do anything but sleep, but one day, John is going to take his time undoing every single button Harold’s wardrobe can throw at him.

“Morning,” says John.

Harold’s smile is faint but his eyes are dark, intent. “May I?” he says, reaching out as if to touch. 

“Of course,” says John, without hesitation.

“You really shouldn’t be so obliging,” Harold fusses, stroking the tips of his fingers lightly down John’s throat. John’s eyes shut involuntarily. “Oh my, you really… Still. You don’t know what I want. You might not enjoy all the things I do.”

“I will give you a hundred bucks if you can find something you want to do that I don’t want to do with you.”

“Hmm.” Harold smooths his hands over John’s bare collarbones and shoulders. “I believe I’ll resist the urge to take that as a challenge. Have you—”

With a sudden, wild snarl, Bear leaps from the bed and disappears from the room. John’s heart plummets in his chest. He flings himself off the bed and grabs his gun, stashed next to the milk crate where Harold keeps his glasses.

“Someone’s here,” he tells Harold, as he yanks his pants on. “Stay here until I come back.”

“I can’t!” Harold pushes the blankets back “If the library has been compromised, I have to—”

In the distance there’s a shriek, followed by furious barking. Harold’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. John frowns, questioning.

“That voice,” says Harold, urgently. “That was a woman’s voice.”


	10. The Saving People Business

**Cobble Hill (Brooklyn)  
March 31, 2012  
6:29 a.m.**

The first thing Grace registers when she flips the light switch in her apartment is that all the tea things she’d shared with John yesterday are still scattered across her small kitchen table. Like Christmas afternoon, when you’re cleaning up the torn paper and crumpled bows from Christmas morning, and you know the best part of the day is over. 

_Plus,_ Grace thinks, _my presents kind of sucked this year._

If she doesn’t start cleaning up now, she won’t do it at all. She’s awfully sentimental, and a little superstitious. If she leaves it till tomorrow, tomorrow she’ll think, _I’m never going to see them again,_ and the mug John drank his tea out of will turn into some kind of sticky talisman. And she doesn’t want that mug to sit on the table for a month with a quarter inch of cold tea turning to tar in the bottom. That’s her favorite mug; it has a tiny holographic dumbo octopus on the front. 

Luckily, she stuffed herself with so much sugar and caffeine at the diner that she should be good for a few more hours.

She gathers and washes the mugs, and empties the napkin-lined basket full of hard, stale pieces of picked-over lemon poppyseed muffin. Grace wipes down the counter and loads the dishwasher for good measure, then turns to face the rest of her apartment. 

The problem is that she feels like she walked out of a theater before the play was over. Like she’d been part of a bigger story for a couple of days, then got shooed off the stage before she had a chance to say her lines.

She takes a deep breath. When the tears come she just blinks them away and goes to sit at her drawing table. Her big drawing pad is there, still folded back to the page where she’d been sketching out a plan for Harold’s snowfield painting. 

As dawn gets closer, light begins to fill her apartment: watery and grey, purple and blue, like a Monet dripping down the walls. Grace hasn’t seen a sunrise from the wrong side since she was in art school, probably. There isn’t a sound in the apartment except for the hiss of the radiator, the tapping of light rain against the window, the scratching of her pencil against the paper. 

A cramp in her shoulder eventually forces her to unhunch and take a stretch break. By then a couple of hours have passed, and Grace feels less like the cowgirl from Toy Story and more like herself.

John didn’t have to make her any promises, but he did. She may never see Harold again, but she will see John, and that’s something. 

_Shower,_ she thinks, _then Bob Ross videos until I fall asleep._

Her phone buzzes, clattering against the kitchen table. Grace walks over and checks the screen. The message is from an unknown number. It says, _You can help them._ She’s always getting spam texts. 

Grace blocks the number and goes to start the hot water running.

When she’s showered and dressed and wearing a fluffy robe over her clothes, Grace carries her laptop to her gleamingly clean kitchen table to look at her end-of-month bills. She checks over her spreadsheets of unpaid invoices and takes note of which clients need gentle (or not so gentle) reminder emails. Then she logs into her bank’s website and checks her balance. 

Her combined account balance is now a six figure number. 

Exhaustion keeps her from falling out of her chair. On the table, by her hand, her phone lights up. _Will you help them?_ it says. Grace almost laughs; for once in her life, she has more than enough money to donate to whatever kind of campaign or charity fundraiser she’s being spammed over. 

She spends a few minutes trying to tell herself that it’s a bank error. All those zeroes will disappear again in a day or two, maybe. Deep down she knows better. Harold owns a house on Washington Square. A _spare_ house. And either he really does own an insurance company or he hired a room full of actors to make it look like he did. 

_This is how he says goodbye,_ she thinks. Grace leans back in her chair, still too shocked to know how she feels. 

Her phone lights up again, but this time the message is a picture. Two men, seen from behind, entering an unmarked metal door in a brick wall, partially covered in graffiti. The tall one is wearing an overcoat and a beanie; the short one, dark square glasses and a trilby hat. 

The phone buzzes in her hand. _They need your help,_ it says. Another text follows, with an address on 37th St.

Grace feels a tremendous, sickening swoop in her stomach. _Who is this,_ she texts back, fingers trembling.

She isn’t surprised when she doesn’t get an answer.

What was it Harold told her, back at the house, about “identifying numbers” and his “proprietary technology”? Were they always social security numbers? Did they ever get someone’s address?

 _This is dumb,_ she tells herself as she swaps her bathrobe for a coat. _This is really dumb,_ she tells herself, as she gathers up her sketchpad and her bag and her keys where she’d put them down a few hours ago. _Even if you’re right, they probably won’t like you barging in on them this early in the morning._

But when Grace gets to the sidewalk, there’s a yellow cab idling on the curb right near the door. “Hi!” the driver waves from the window to get her attention. “Hello, you need a ride?”

“Why do you ask?” she says, wary.

“I got a text, it said to wait for you. Small lady, red hair.” 

“Who texted you?” Grace’s brow furrows.

“No idea, but they paid in advance. You want to go somewhere or not?”

She’s already opening the door. “What’s your name?”

“Uh, Farid?”

“Farid, did they give you an address?”

“No, no address, except this one.”

“All right. We might need to do some hunting around, but we’re gonna start at the corner of 37th and Madison.”

*

Actually, the door is easy to identify. Grace can see it from the taxi, next to a row of green shop awnings. No one’s removed the graffiti yet, which makes it as individual as a fingerprint. She thanks Farid, celebrates her new wealth by giving him a tip bigger than her monthly rent, and gets out.

The door is designed to be overlooked. Probably a service entrance. There’s no way of telling which building it leads to because everything here is old and shares walls. It looks like the kind of door that should be deadbolted and alarmed, but instead there is a tiny, discreet keypad mounted in the brick, and when Grace looks up she finds herself blinking into the lens of a security camera.

“Hi,” she says, grateful there’s no one nearby to overhear. “Are you Harold’s...technology?”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. The new text contains an 11 digit security code, which feels like overkill and makes her wonder what, exactly, this door is protecting. 

“Here goes nothing,” she says, and pulls the door shut behind her, fast.

A short, dark corridor leads to an ordinary interior door, with an ordinary lock. Grace checks for a key above the lintel and her fingertips come away smeared with dust. Her phone doesn’t buzz. She knocks, and there’s no reply. Finally, she just tries the door, and finds it open.

“Bet they’ll lock it after today,” she mutters, and ventures into the next room, which proves to be the marble foyer of what appears to be an enormous, long abandoned library. 

Decorative wrought iron doors stand ajar, and past them are empty shelves and a floor so littered with abandoned, mistreated books that it’s a challenge to step around them and not on them. Here and there Grace catches a glimpse of a title that grabs her eye, or gilt lettering, or handcrafted marble endpapers. She has to remind herself not to get distracted.

Ahead of her is a broad, elegant staircase. A lady in a big dress would come sweeping down that staircase to open a ball, or an important politician would stand at the top to give a speech. The sea of books laps up onto the first few steps. Grace wonders why no one’s moved them. Surely that’s a tripping hazard, especially for Harold.

God, she hopes Harold and John are actually here, or she’s going to feel extremely stupid.

The stairs don’t creak. That’s something. She makes no noise at all as she climbs to the top of the landing, takes a good look around, then continues to the second floor. 

Up here, things are more orderly. There are shelves lined up in disciplined rows, and the books are on the shelves and not the floor. An uneven layer of dust covers everything, but there are signs that some books have been taken down and put back more recently than others. 

Grace walks softly towards a collapsible gate that separates the shelves from a small alcove. The alcove is flooded with soft light from frosted windows, bordered with stained glass. This must be where Harold works; she sees a table, and a bunch of computer monitors, and there, behind the table—

Grace inhales softly.

There’s a corkboard leaning against the far wall, covered in a huge, complicated collage that’s taller than she is and at least four feet wide. The human faces jump out first, but when she draws closer, she realizes that the central figure is actually a long, long list of social security numbers printed on an old fashioned dot matrix machine. Red twine connects each number with a photograph, a newspaper clipping.

Hundreds of numbers. _Hundreds_ of photos and news articles and profiles and obituaries.

 _They need your help,_ the text said.

Her throat feels tight. “Of course I’ll help,” she whispers fiercely. “Why’d you wait so long to ask me?”

Suddenly, from somewhere deep in the library, Grace hears snarling, barking, a man’s voice raised in alarm. She has just enough time to think, _that’s right, they have a dog,_ and then she sees it: an enormous animal, ears flat against a bullet shaped head, charging directly at her with teeth bared.

“Oh!” she says. “Oh, no.”

Grace only makes it as far as the top of the staircase before a heavy weight crashes against her back, and the smooth soles of her ballet flats slip underneath her.

When she was a kid, she fell down a staircase. She doesn’t remember a lot about it; it was an accident, supposedly, she wasn’t seriously hurt. But, she reflects, as the dog sends her flying, and the landing knocks the wind out of her: the stairs at her old house weren’t made of freakin’ _marble_.

*

**HQ  
March 31, 2012  
8:34 a.m.**

Not until John gets to the top of the stairs and sees Bear standing, growling over Grace’s still form, does he realize that the intruder in the library isn’t the woman he assumed it was.

John orders Bear to stand down, and the shout rings off the high ceiling. He vaults down the staircase, sliding to a stop at Grace’s side.

“Can you see me? Can you hear me?” No blood that he sees, no visible deformities. Bear is too well trained to bite, at least. “Any pain? Grace, say something.”

“Ngh,” says Grace. “No, not hurt. Got my bell rung. Give me a second.”

She starts pushing herself upright, cradling her right arm against her chest. “Easy,” says John, supporting her back. “Did you twist it?”

“Yeah, but not too bad. I don’t think it’s sprained.” She doesn’t meet his eyes. It’s worrying, until John sees the flush on her cheeks and realizes she’s embarrassed.

He brushes her hair out of her face. “Did you black out?”

“No. Give me a hand, please.”

John tugs her up by her good hand, and she finds her feet. She’s wearing different clothes, but the dark circles under her eyes make him think she hasn’t slept since the last time they saw each other. John, on the other hand, is suddenly aware that he’s still wearing the clean set of gym clothes he slept in. He doesn’t even want to know what his hair looks like.

“I was worried it was too early,” she says uncertainly. “Did I wake you up?”

John blinks at her. 

Suddenly, Bear, still guarding like John told him to, surges forward. Grace leaps back so fast that John grabs her, thinking she’s about to faint. 

Then he hears Harold’s voice ringing off the rafters. “What’s happening?” he calls, shrill and worried. “John? Is it—”

John cranes his head over his shoulder. Harold, still in his undershirt, looks down over the railing. 

Harold’s gaze alights on Grace. His face drains of color. 

Nobody speaks for a moment. Grace, radiating awkwardness, does a little shuffle so she’s partly hidden behind John. He can feel the nervous energy running through her, like she could bolt any second. 

Except John can’t let her do that. She’s hurt, for one thing. And he really needs to know how she found the library.

“Grace needs something cold to put on her wrist,” he calls up to Harold.

“I don’t—” Harold’s head twitches. 

John knows what he’s thinking. They don’t bring numbers to HQ, ever. Even Joss and Lionel don’t know about the library. But Grace had brought herself, and they have to assume that she’s already seen everything.

“Check the first aid station,” John tells Harold. “I think we keep a few cold packs there. We’re coming up.”

Harold’s expression goes completely blank. He gives a short nod, then turns on his heel and climbs the stairs back to the second floor.

John watches him go for a minute. Then he touches Grace’s arm.

Grace looks up at him. “I don’t think he’s happy.”

“He, uh, just woke up.” John smiles. “You going to be okay on the stairs?”

“I think so. Do you guys usually sleep here?”

“No. Last night was, uh…” John feels heat climbing up the side of his neck. “We worked really late.”

Grace peers at him. He watches realization dawn on her face. John just smiles and nudges her toward the stairs.

When they reach Harold’s workstation, John pulls the padded bench out for Grace to sit on. Bear takes up position next to the desk, tongue lolling. He catches John’s eye and makes a high pitched noise between a whine and a yawn. Grace watches as he dances eagerly in place. 

“It’s okay,” John tells her. “His name’s Bear. He’s actually really friendly. We just, ah...”

“Don’t get many visitors?” Grace guesses.

“Right.”

Hesitantly, Grace gestures for Bear to approach. Bear scurries over, resting his snout on the bench cushion next to her knee. Grace begins scratching his ears, and John sits on the other side of the dog, watching her. 

It’s worrying that she found them; but, John realizes, it’s also worrying that she felt the need to look for them in the first place. 

“Grace,” he says tentatively. “Is everything okay?”

She squints, like she’s thinking. After the kind of weekend she’s had, that probably seems like a strange question.

John rests his elbows on his knees so he’s closer to her level. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says. “I’m happy to see you.”

“But?”

There’s a faint noise from the aisle that leads back to the sleeping area. Harold steps into view, clutching the first aid kit. He’s changed back into his suit. John has to remind himself that there will be other opportunities to see Harold in his shirt sleeves.

“John is concerned because this location is supposed to be a closely guarded secret.” Harold snags the back of a rolling chair and pulls it over to the bench. “So—please don’t take this the wrong way, but we are both intensely curious how you happen to be here.” 

Grace lifts her chin as Harold begins unpacking the first aid kit, setting items out in a row.

“After John took me off home, I got a few texts,” she says. “And they all said that you needed my help.”

Harold sits up straight, eyes the size of silver dollars. He looks to John, but John can only stare back at him, shoulders stiff. 

“ _Who_ said that we needed help?” John’s never heard Harold sound so mystified.

Grace looks between them uncertainly. “I mean, they didn’t say. But it has to be your computer, right? The one that sends you the numbers?”

Long seconds of stunned silence follow. Harold looks like his world has come unmoored. John, though…

When Harold was kidnapped, John had panicked. He’d just gotten used to being half of a partnership again, and then he was alone, the only person on the planet who truly understood how important Harold was, what it meant for the world that he was missing. So he’d demanded help from a camera on a street corner. 

And it worked. Because the Machine makes exceptions sometimes. It looks after everyone, but there are people it cares about. Harold even admitted that the Machine has a history of singling Grace out. John wonders if maybe it got tired of waiting for Harold to follow through.

“May I see your wrist, please?” Harold says, finally.

Grace lets Harold wrap a towel around her wrist, then secure an ice pack over the towel with an elastic bandage. He’s good at this stuff. John’s given him plenty of practice.

“I got a picture of you two,” she explains. “Taken outside that door with the graffiti. Then there was a cab waiting for me outside my building. I thought maybe you were in trouble.” She hesitates, then shakes her head. “I didn’t know what to think.”

Harold secures the elastic bandage with a metal clip. “May I see your phone?” he asks.

Grace hands her phone over. Harold touches the screen, then goes very still, blinking a few times. After a moment, he passes the phone to John without looking at him. John takes it, wary.

The message on the screen was sent from an unknown number less than a minute ago. It says, _She can help you._

John swallows hard and puts the phone down on the bench. A second later, he covers his mouth with his hand and looks away before Harold sees him smile. 

“John, I wonder…” Harold’s brow furrows until his eyebrows form a V. “That is, might I impose upon you…”

That’s enough of a cue for John. Whatever is cooking up inside Harold right now, he needs to talk it out with Grace in private. 

Grace looks around at John as he stands up, and he squeezes her shoulder.

“Time for Bear to go out,” he explains. “I’ll get us some breakfast. You take your coffee with cream, no sugar, right?”

*

**[location: redacted]  
9:03 a.m.**

The silence John leaves behind him is somehow more daunting than Harold was prepared for. 

Grace sits with her bandaged wrist resting in her lap, fidgeting with her phone, looking everywhere but at him. Harold dithers, packing away the first aid supplies, putting the box back on its shelf. 

Finally, when he can’t possibly put it off any longer, he seats himself on the bench beside her. Even then, he can’t speak right away.

Grace’s body language is not precisely encouraging. She keeps her eyes averted, her hands close to her body. He senses uncertainty, anxiety. He wants to reassure her and he doesn’t know how. He’s not certain that he is the proper person to reassure her at all. Perhaps she would be happier if John were here. 

Perhaps Harold should make an effort to master his insecurity before it makes him say something foolish.

“Look, Harold.” Grace lays both palms flat on her knees. “I came here because I thought you and John needed me. I don’t want to make trouble.” 

Abruptly, he is furious. Not with Grace, of course, but with the absurdity of it all. The _meddling_. 

“You were set up,” he declares. “It’s been manipulating both of us for years, trying to bring something like this about.”

He breaks off, panic making his heart hammer in his chest. _Nathan died for this_ drums at the back of his mind. 

“‘It’?” says Grace cautiously.

Harold tries to force tension from his body with a long exhale. Slowly, he stands up and comes to sit on the bench next to her, looking out at nothing in particular as he speaks.

“I received your number for the first time over eight years ago, in 2004,” he tells her. “Then a few months later, in 2005, and again in January of 2006. Not because of any danger; the number protocol worked differently in those days.” He fiddles with his cuff. “On each of those occasions, you had come to the promenade to paint, just as I had come with my laptop to do a few hours’ work outside the office. I first saw you at the exact spot where you and John met two days ago.” 

He adjusts his glasses, pausing in case Grace has anything to say. 

“On the third occasion—January of 2006—I came very close to introducing myself. There was almost no one else in the park that morning. The cold drove them away, I suppose. But there you were, at the railing with your canvas. You were painting a young girl in a hat, looking out over the water. I remember thinking how strange it was, that your painting could evoke such a strong feeling of childhood nostalgia in me. I didn’t even live in the city until I was in college. That, I believe, was the true moment when I first thought that I would like to own a painting of yours. Not that your illustration work isn’t charming, of course,” he says, as an afterthought.

When Grace speaks at last, her voice is soft and wondering, with no accusation. “Did you buy ice cream from a food truck?”

Harold looks up, blinking in astonishment. 

“It _was_ you.” Grace points at him. “I drew a little cartoon of you in my sketchbook that afternoon!” 

He feels himself flush. “It never occurred to me that I was memorable.”

“A man with a profile like an Edward Gorey drawing, alone and eating an ice cream cone in a park in January. How could you not be memorable?”

Harold doesn’t have anything to say to that. They sit together in silence for a moment; the distance between them seems a little smaller than before.

“When I first received your number, I assumed it was a bug.” He wants to confess everything, suddenly; it’s a strange, surreal feeling, like a delirious fever. “I looked deep into your background, trying to understand why it kept nudging me in your direction.”

“Did you figure it out?”

That flush isn’t going anywhere, and now his hands are sweaty to boot. “When I told John this story, he suggested that it was an attempt at matchmaking. If so, it backfired. Looking into your life showed me what a very extraordinary person you are, and the prospect of speaking to you became correspondingly more daunting.”

“I thought we were pretty good at talking to each other, actually. I enjoyed our coffee date.”

“So did I.” Harold turns to her. “More than you can imagine. Grace...it just isn’t fair. To you, I mean. When we met, I knew almost everything about you. I chose that cafe on purpose because it fit your taste profile based on your spending patterns in cafes and restaurants in the city over the past decade.”

She blinks. “That’s a lot of preparation just for a coffee date.”

“But that’s what I’m saying. It wasn’t for our date, it was for _me_.” He sighs. “I would think, sometimes, about how different my life could have been if I’d spoken to you back then, if we’d become friends.”

“And now, here I am. In your top secret hideout, getting texts from your secret number machine.”

Harold gulps so hard he’s sure it must be audible.

“Just tell me something,” Grace says. “Is it usually right?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you trust what it tells you? When it sends you numbers, is it ever wrong?”

He can feel the walls of a trap closing in around him. “No, never. But it doesn’t get a say in our personal lives. It isn’t _human_. I certainly will not allow it to—to _draft_ you into this. You can’t fully appreciate how much danger is entailed in this work.” 

Grace scrunches up her nose, which is adorable to the point of being unfair. “Well, clearly that’s not always the case. I wouldn’t call my dad or Sarah Hibbert _extremely_ dangerous.”

“Had things gone differently, they might have been.”

Grace turns to face him fully. Harold can’t escape her scrutiny without being rude. “The texts said that I can help you. Not that I had to. You and John don’t have to do this either, right? Nobody’s forcing you?”

“No.”

She gets up and drifts slowly over to the numbers board propped against the far wall. She stands with her hands at her side and her head tilted back, like she’s in a museum, studying some larger than life painting. Harold waits until he can’t bear it anymore, then comes over to join her.

“There are so many numbers,” she says.

“These represent the cases I worked on my own. Before I...before John and I met.”

She frowns, drifting closer. “You saved all these people by yourself?”

“No.” His tone is harsher than intended. “Not all.”

When Grace turns to look at him, he keeps his gaze fixed straight ahead. He doesn’t think he should meet her eyes. There’s a needy, pathetic part of him that wants to beg on bended knee for Grace to stay here forever, in the shelter of the library—close, easily protected, like some kind of cherished pet. The louder that voice clamors, the more decency demands that Harold act opposite to it. He should do everything in his power to freeze her out, push her away. He should burn the townhouse and the library and flee.

 _Where would you go?_ says the voice at the back of his thoughts. As always, it sounds like Nathan at his most irritating. _You think you can outrun the Machine? You tried that. Look where it got you last time._

“I’m not saying you guys don’t do good work,” says Grace. “But if the two of you can do all this, it’s only reasonable that three can do even more.”

He smiles feebly. His heart is pounding. “Flawless reasoning. Your time at Yale was not wasted.”

“But you’re not convinced.”

Harold doesn’t know what he is. It’s quite possible that he’s having an anxiety attack. He looks for Bear, then remembers that he’s with John.

“Okay.” Grace takes a step back. “It’s okay, I get it. I’ll go—”

“No!” He only narrowly stops himself from clutching at her sleeve. 

Grace blinks at him. Harold steels himself. _John reached out to you,_ he thinks, irritated with his own floundering. _You can at least reach out to Grace._

He swallows, and holds out his hand.

Grace looks at him for a long moment. Studying him. Weighing him in the balance, perhaps. When she rests her hand in his palm and sits back down again, Harold threads their fingers together and turns to face her.

When Grace gives him a small smile, it feels like a crack running down the center of his chest has split open. There’s a moment of hot, sharp pain, and then the immense lightness of a weight lifting. 

He would keep her safe forever if he could, but that option has been taken out of his hands. All that is left is Grace’s choice, which it seems she has made.

“You _musn’t_ stop painting.” He blinks against the sting in his eyes.

“As of about 5 o’clock this morning, I’m an independently wealthy woman.” Grace reaches out without warning and adjusts the knot of his tie. “I can paint whatever I want now, without worrying whether some rich guy will pay me enough money for it. Do you mind if I look around later? I bet there’s enough room and light upstairs for a studio space.”

Harold lets out a long breath. “I suppose,” he says carefully, “that you should make yourself at home.”

Grace keeps smiling at him, big and happy and easier than anything in Harold’s life has been for a very long time. Downstairs, a door shuts, loud as an announcement, followed by the sound of Bear’s claws scrabbling excitedly over the floor.

“That will be John, with our breakfast,” says Harold. “We usually have croquillants, but he probably remembered that you prefer almond croissants.”


	11. Epilogue

**_WEST PROMENADE  
CAM 27 - 03/29/2012  
07:12:33_ **

A woman stands alone, overlooking the grey water. It’s a windy day in March, and her pale skin is reddened with the cold. Layers of unevenly peeling paint snag at the palms of her wool gloves where her small hands grip the metal railing. 

Her name is Grace Hendricks. In this park, on this cold, slate-grey spring morning, her red hair is the brightest thing visible for miles. 

She pays no attention at first when she hears footsteps approaching. The park is a public place, and Grace thinks of herself as unnoticeable. 

But then a man clears his throat softly, and she jumps. 

“I hope I’m not bothering you.” His voice is soft and careful, at odds with his intimidating appearance. “But I see you here pretty often, and I thought I’d introduce myself.”

Grace narrows her eyes in contemplation. “I am here a lot.”

A small smile lights up his eyes. “My name’s John.”

“Grace,” says Grace, wary. 

The man is a foot taller than her, expensively dressed, and so handsome that he’s startling to look at. That such a person might have introduced himself out of a simple desire to know her better does not occur to her. Flirtation with strangers is a foreign country.

“You’re an artist?” John says.

Seventy-three percent of her visits to the promenade are for painting, but today is one of the few days Grace has come to the park without an easel. Her apprehension increases.

“Yesterday, I was getting coffee, and I saw this magazine cover,” John explains. “It was a painting of fish—koi, I think. It looked familiar, but I didn’t know why, and it bugged me all day. But just now I saw you, and I thought I remembered—” 

Grace’s mouth falls open. “Are you talking about _The Boroughs?_ I did the cover of the February edition.”

John grins, apparently delighted. His teeth are very white, even from a distance. “I didn’t think I’d be right,” he says. “I thought you’d tell me I was seeing things.”

“You must have a good eye, John. I’ve been painting in parks all over the city for twenty years, but this is the first time a stranger’s ever recognized my work out in the wild, so to speak.”

“Really? That’s strange, you’re very memorable.” 

Grace tilts her head, curious.

Shortly after Grace arrived, John entered the park and sat with his coffee on the bench behind her. A flock of small birds startled into flight and the noise made her turn her head. 

For just a moment her eyes had caught on John’s profile. His hooded eyes and Roman nose gave him a familiar look, as if he were a Renaissance painting of Christ that had escaped from his frame. She hadn’t realized he might be looking back

“Grace,” says John, “I hope I’m not being intrusive, but is everything all right?”

She freezes. “Yes, of course. Why would you…”

He grimaces, acknowledging the awkwardness. “When I saw you a second ago I thought you looked a little upset.”

“Oh, no,” she balks automatically. “I’m fine, I just…” 

She trails off when nothing plausible springs to mind. John hesitates, then joins her at the railing, resting his hands a few inches from hers. 

“Just a rough morning,” she says, to fill the silence. “You know how it is.”

“Sure,” he nods. “Actually, I had an argument with my boss right before I came here.”

“That doesn’t sound fun.”

“Nothing serious. Kind of spoiled my morning coffee, though. I was planning to pick up some eclairs today but I ended up not having the time.”

He sounds so genuinely miffed that Grace can’t help laughing a little. “I guess an after-lunch eclair just wouldn’t be the same, huh?”

John chuckles. “Not the same at all.”

“Poor you.”

He tilts his head. “I would ask if your boss was giving you a hard time too, but you’re probably a freelancer, right?”

“Yes, I am.” 

She almost resents his efforts to be charming. John seems nice, but even the satisfaction of him recognizing her artwork feels wrong today, like how grapefruit juice tastes right after you brush your teeth.

Grace’s daily routines are seeded with simple, comfortable rewards, sufficient to motivate any soft human animal into ambling obediently from one necessary task to the next. She tends her happiness like a gardener raking over her one small bit of earth. Happiness is a skill she has cultivated, rather than a gift of her nature.

Even a truly happy person isn’t immune to grief, though.

“I volunteer at this group home on 70th,” she says, into John’s strangely patient and inviting silence. “One of the kids I work with died just after Christmas, I was just...dwelling on it, I guess.”

John’s mouth tightens, and the lines around his eyes crease with sympathy. He’s going to say something nice, she can tell. Grace blinks hard and shoves her hands into her pockets.

“And I’ve got this appointment with a prospective client in an hour,” she says. “I need the work, so I can’t cancel on him, but if I don’t pull myself together I’m probably going to end up weeping into a cup of fancy espresso.”

John’s mouth opens and shuts, like he was going to say something then thought better of it. “I’m sure he’d understand,” he says feebly.

“Well, still. I’m not trying to look like a crazy artist. I don’t think that’s the kind of painter the CEO of a giant insurance company wants to commission his office art from.”

“You never know.” The corner of John’s mouth ticks up. “Is your appointment uptown, by any chance? I have to be heading back to the office, but I’d like to offer you a lift if I can.”

Heat blooms violently in Grace’s cheeks, making her face sting in the cold. “Oh no, I’m fine John, thank you. Really.”

“It’s no trouble. Besides, a few more minutes of friendly company would help keep me from having to face my boss again.”

Ingrained social instinct nags her to refuse. Weighing against that is the bitter cold, the long walk she has ahead of her, and the fact that talking to John for just five minutes has soothed the sore place in her heart the tiniest little bit. 

“All right.” Grace takes a deep breath, and smiles her first genuine smile of the morning. “Anything to protect you from your eclair-stealing boss.”

John gives a surprised-sounding bark of laughter. They turn toward the east walk entrance together, and when John offers her his arm, Grace accepts it. 

He makes eye contact with camera 27 as they pass underneath it. His expression says, _I hope you know what you’re doing._

He has nothing to worry about. They are being watched by someone who loves them.

**Author's Note:**

> ["The Kingfisher", by Rosemary & Garlic](https://youtu.be/_waCAjD2sF8)


End file.
